Believe it or not, there was once a time when you had to actually get up off the sofa and walk over to the TV and turn it on. After waiting for the tubes to warm and after adjusting the horizontal controls, you could sit down and watch TV – both channels.
For Boomers, the Age of Electronics began with the remote control device for the television set. We were in heaven. Then it got worse. Boomers now live in a foreign world of tweets and twitters, of Google and Yahoo. Before this invasion of gizmos, a mouse pad was just a place where Mickey and Minnie lived. Memory was something that was lost with age. A cursor was somebody who used profanity and a hard drive was a really long trip. Webs were something spiders made and a virus meant you were sick.
Before the age of electronics, life was simpler. Alarm clocks beside the bed were wound up with a spring and a single knob on top triggered a sharp ring at 6 AM. Telephones involved operators and dials and if you wanted to find out how to get somewhere, you looked at a map. Home security systems consisted of feisty cocker spaniels and households relied on both a morning and an evening newspaper for their news.
Boomers didn’t have cable TV. They used rabbit ears to improve TV reception. After the Tonight Show, TV stations signed off with the National Anthem. At daylight, they returned to the airways playing the same tune.
In those days, kitchen appliances consisted of a refrigerator – some called them iceboxes – and a range. Exercise machines were baby strollers and push lawnmowers. If you wanted to add numbers, you got out a pencil and piece of paper. Your mind was the calculator.
But times have changed, leaving the electronically challenged Boomers struggling with how to even answer a modern cell phone. Sending something called a text involves the use of fingers that are far too large and clumsy to adapt to a Barbie-sized keyboard. The strangest messages are now being passed among Boomers.
“L’tsk otter oizzs got dummet” is a typical typo-laden Boomer text meaning: “Let’s order a pizza for dinner.”
And all this social media stuff? My kids talked me into signing up for Face Book and Linked In. I now have hundreds of new friends and lots of messages, but I can’t remember my password. And when you go on-line for help, they say: “What’s your password?”
I have finally learned by trial and error how to use e-mail, but each morning I have to respond to at least 10 people overseas, explaining that I am not likely the one they think has inherited $5 million from a long lost uncle.
I now have an I-Phone and it’s smarter than I am. I can barely answer it, much less use all the apps. Last week, I put my phone in my pocket and kept it with me all day – surprised that I didn’t get an important call I was expecting. When I emptied my pockets that night, I discovered where the missing remote control was. They look a lot alike, you know.
And the television. Heaven forbid if you push the wrong button on the wrong control. I have to call my daughter sometimes to come home from California and get our TV back in sync. Like many Boomers, when it comes to modern electronics, I don’t have a clue.