Digital Slob
Digital Slob
High tech isn’t
granny’s cup of teaChristmas is for the children," or so goes the platitude many of us clung to last week as we sat grinding our teeth beside our parents, who know how to push our buttons in a pinch better than astronaut Jim Lovell on Apollo 13.
It is a soothing, if trite, phrase, because kids are a cakewalk compared to trying to force-feed our parents the instructions to their new digital gift without the gift-giver first chugging down all the eggnog.
We Digital Slobs learned this holiday lesson long ago and avoid high-tech presents for our elders (plus, we break the bank just buying them tins of easily chewable flavored popcorn). Yet our opposite, Respectable People, can bang their heads on the same brick wall Season of Giving after Season of Giving, trying in vain to keep the whole family on the same technological page in an age where high-tech advances double every seven or eight minutes.
This column, then, is a belated Christmas gift for Respectable People, because once their concussions subside and they can refocus their eyes, they might read this and come to their senses in time for next year. If so, I have a new platitude for them, perfectly apt for the holidays in the Digital Age, save some minor tinkering.
The phrase is, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
All you have to do is replace "a horse" with "Grandma," "water" with "digital technology," and "drink" with either "utilize," "optimize," or "just shut up and open the $%#*#@ box!"
Seniors have little need to technologically upgrade their lives. They have no urge to "keep up with the Joneses," because their "Joneses" are most likely dead.
Trying to pull elders into the Brave New World kicking and screaming is nothing new. Even my mother (who still has one of the last remaining coal-burning VCRs in operation) remembers buying her mom a newfangled toaster oven back in the '70s that Grandma never used -- not once. My mom thought it might be nice if Grandma didn't have to preheat the big oven to 450 degrees, and her whole house in general to about 110 degrees, just to brown some biscuits. But Grandma let the toaster collect dust until water from the sink rusted it out. Think about that as your mom sizes up her new PDA with the pretty ribbon on it.
But you Respectable People are convinced you know the best way to do everything. You know the best way to make an apple pie; the best places in Europe you saw, but everyone else missed; and most certainly, you know the best format to store baby pictures to weather the next dozen or so Ice Ages. But don't expect mom or dad to join you as you pat yourself on the head, because they'll be too busy sharing their flavored popcorn with the Digital Slobs who bought it for them.
This is, indeed, the way nature intended. Think about what the Greatest Generation had to live through -- the Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Red Scare, Vietnam, Watergate, the Energy Crisis, and even that year Pat Sajak left "Wheel of Fortune," and no one could be sure if he'd ever come back. After all that stress, must they now endure Windows XP as well?
Is that how you would want to spend your twilight years? On hold with technical support just to see photos of little Joey's first birthday? Please. Life is short. Just give them the Kodak prints and let's move on, mercifully, into a Happy New Year.
Curt Brandao is the Star-Bulletin's
production editor. Reach him at
at: cbrandao@starbulletin.com