**A Good Laugh About Technology**

I thought about the 30 year business I ran with 1800 employees, all

without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and

communicated with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids,

their spouses, 13 grandkids 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 grandkids 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 as everyone in the

nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have 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

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 when I would make a right turn

instead, it was not good.

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.