For Boomers, it all began with the remote control for the television set: The coming of the age of electronics. A world of tweets and twitters, of Google and Yahoo. Before this strange new world of gizmos, a mouse pad was just a place where a mouse 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.
Before the age of electronics, life was simpler and arguably more enjoyable. 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. Webs were something spiders made and a virus meant you were sick.
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. Going on a diet meant cutting back to one slice of bacon for breakfast and leaving the butter off the toast – though that was for extreme diets.
For Boomers there were usually only one or two movie theaters in town, not multiple Cineplex’s with speakers loud enough to take out the first twenty rows of anybody without an adjustable hearing aid.
So 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.
“U thin I’kk otter s oizzs got dummet” is a little known Boomer translation meaning: “I think I’ll order a pizza for dinner.”
And all this social media stuff? My kids talked me into signing up for Face Book. Aligned and Linked In. I now have over 250 messages on each, but don’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 regular e-mail, but each morning I have to respond to at least 25 people overseas, explaining that I am not likely the one they think has inherited $5 million from a long lost uncle.
My wife got a new cell phone last week. She has a Smart Phone. Mine is just sort of an average student phone. When her phone rang this morning, I wasn’t smart enough to answer it.
Not long ago, 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 North Carolina and get our TV back in sync. Like many Boomers, when it comes to modern electronics, I don’t have a clue.