Modern Life

      When I bought my Blackberry I thought about  the 30-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all  without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos,  pictures and communicates with Facebook and  Twitter.  I signed up under duress  for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses,  13 grand kids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with  me in the modern way. I figured I could handle  something  as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of  space.

       That was before one of my grand kids hooked  me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie  and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that  sends every message to my cell phone and every other  program within the texting world.

       My phone was  beeping every three minutes with the details of everything  except the bowel movements of the entire next generation.  I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in  the garage in my golf bag.

       The kids bought me a GPS  for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now  and then going over to the grocery store or library. I  keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth  [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble  talking to my wife and everyone in  the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me.  I had to take my  hearing aid out to use it, and  I got a little loud.

        I mean the GPS looked pretty  smart on my dash board, but the lady inside that gadget  was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a  long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say,  "Re-calc-ul-ating."  You would think that she could  be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a  U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a right turn  instead well, it was not a good relationship.

        When  I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the  name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she  loves me.

        To be perfectly frank, I am still trying  to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We  have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out  how I can lose three phones all at once and have run  around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms  and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

        The world is just getting too complex for  me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery  store. You would think they could settle on something  themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time  I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of  those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take them in with me.

        Now I toss  it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I  just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual."  Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank  look.

        I was recently  asked if I tweet. I answered, "No, but I do toot a  lot."