Every day it seems like there is another announcement of new technology with handheld devices. The app now is the current rage. You see, without an app on your phone, you can’t propel yourself up from the couch, put down the bag of Cheetos, wipe the drool from your mouth, step over the soda cans and instantly find out there has been a raging thunderstorm overnight and your car has a giant tree stuck in the middle of the roof. So apps are in today, along with driverless cars, which we see here every day, well they may as well be driverless, and the latest luggage that you can sit on and ride through the airport.
Now, I’m not a big fan of social media either, much to the consternation of my children.
I guess consternation is not the right word, more like affirmation that anything beyond a rotary phone is way past my limited comprehension.
This attitude exists even though I managed to raise these same children, run a household, keep a career and take care of any crisis, which included rescuing one child from a roof and extricating another child from under the hem of a large women’s dress in a department store.
At some point, I became an extension of their ATM machine, providing emergency funds for their every financial need.
Still, I should warn you, in spite of all this, if you are not up on the latest technology, which includes sharing the most boring minutiae of your personal life, your children believe your lack of interest means you probably dropped a lot of acid in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and the effects still haven’t worn off.
Anyway, I did advance to a cellphone, which I really enjoyed, once I got the hang of it, approximately one hour before the three-year warranty ran out. However after much hysterical laughter whenever I took the cellphone out, I finally bought one of those smart iPhones. OK, so my old cellphone was so enormous it did look like it was a walkie-talkie from World War II. I have to admit it was rather large, but at least I could find it in my purse and it doubled as a concealed weapon on those dark nights I had to walk back to my car alone after wiring those same children emergency funds at two in the morning.
Now I have a 6-year-old grandchild who lives in another part of the country, Chicago, well some would characterize it as another country, period. We are in that phase of technology where we Skype. Basically this gives you the chance not only to talk to each other, but also to see each other on a device called an iPad and if you have a 12-year-old handy, you can even do this on your phone.
I have no idea how this works, but to me, electricity is still a mystery. I mean, I know there are wires and stuff, but don’t ask how it gets to my house. To me knowing how electricity works is having memorized the emergency number to the power and light company.
However, most weekends we try to use this technological device to yell, “Can you see me now,” over and over again. We stand on chairs, tip it upside down and move it to the left and right until the only shot that is in focus is the traffic two miles away on Route 1. At one time, a stray dog came into view and the other people continued their conversation, assuming that the canine was really my new hairdo. It takes quite a bit of maneuvering to remove your thumb from the monitor in the corner of the screen, so the other party isn’t basically talking to your nail bed the whole time.
I really don’t like the size of my head on these screens; my face seems to loom over the image. I’m about as relaxed as one of those black-and-white streaming photos from a captured spy plane in the ‘50s.
You know, where the pilot is sitting in front of a camera, speaking in a halting delivery and trying to convince everyone he has converted to the other side.
You can almost see the grandchild recoiling in horror at what is being passed off as her grandparents. In fact, I think there is a whole series of children’s books out now on iPad nightmares. Instead of checking under the bed, parents now have to check all tech devices before children can go to sleep.
Sleep well, my fellow citizens, Big Brother is not watching; your tech devices are, though.
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Nancy Katz has a degree in creative writing and is the author of the book, "Notes from the Beach." She has written the column Around Town for the Cape Gazette for twenty years. Her style is satirical and deals with all aspects of living in a resort area on Delmarva.
