My Drift
Hold the Phone
It was almost déjà vu. A homecoming event found me in the hallway of the sorority house where I had lived as a student fifteen years earlier. The sound of ringing telephones coming from every direction was familiar and brought back memories. There was, however, something new.
“Hi. You’ve reached Mindy and Jen. Leave us a message at the beep.”
Mind you, the answering machine itself was not novel to me. Our home phone had been monitored by one for years. What gave me pause was considering how handy that machine—which had not yet been invented in the early seventies—would have been in college.
When I was in college, the closest thing anybody had to an answering machine was a roommate. If nobody was in your room when that cute Beta called to invite you to the formal, you were just out of luck. What an asset an answering machine would have been, I thought.
It would have saved my friend Patty the embarrassment of responding to a “Patty—call Dave” Post-it by calling Dave, on whom she had a crush, instead of Dave in her marketing class, who wanted to borrow her notes.
Fast forward to now, when answering machines and landlines, call forwarding, and caller ID boxes are obsolete. These days that cute Beta no doubt reaches out to his intended formal date by text while she is in accounting class and he’s working out in the gym. It is efficient in so many ways; it allows him to continue his Burpees uninterrupted and gives her time to weigh her options. Come to think of it, do they even have formals anymore?
I just shipped a package to my sister that had mistakenly been sent to me instead of to her when gremlins invaded her Nordstrom app. I texted her a picture of the receipt with the tracking number so she would know when to look for it and how much to Venmo me for postage. It would have been much more time-consuming without the help of technology. So hooray for technology.
It’s a double-edged sword, though. When it works, it is great, but when it does not work, I often think we would be better off with pencils and Big Chief tablets. My fancy car does everything but take out the trash—and it probably does that if you can figure out how—but when its “brain” suffers a spasm, the whole car just curls up and dies. That is a scary turn of events when you are on the highway. It is possible my car is too smart for its own good.
In fact, most technology is too smart, at least for me. It only works if you understand how to use it, and my understanding of it is tenuous. My response to, “Why don’t you just…” is so often, “I don’t know how to do that,” that it is kind of disturbing.
The Air Pods I use to listen to books while I walk? Fabulous. Syncing them with my phone myself when they were brand new? Not within the realm of possibility. Who knew when I taught the toddler how to use a spoon, he would one day be my tech guru? He set up my Air Pods in five minutes. When Audible would not come through my car speakers, even though my phone was connected via Bluetooth, it only took him thirty seconds to make it work. I did not know that connecting your phone and connecting your “device” were two separate functions, but he did.
Yesterday my text messages stopped sending. Just like that, a little exclamation point and the words “Message failed to send” popped up after every attempt. I tried rebooting; I tried tinkering with my settings. I handed my phone to my son, and he returned it in less than a minute.
“You turned off your iMessages,” he reported. When I assured him that I certainly did not turn off my iMessages because I do not know how to do that, he just smiled. Or did he smirk?
Recently a Facebook post asked, “What’s the biggest lie they taught you in school?” One baby boomer responded with, “You won’t always have a calculator with you.” That did turn out to be a lie; I always have a calculator with me. Unless I leave my phone in the restaurant like I did last night. (Eyeroll emoji)
Technology has given us many gifts, not the least of which involves the ability to communicate with others immediately and efficiently. It all falls to the ground, however, when you turn off your ringer and forget to turn it back on. Many is the “Tap tap. Is this thing on?” text I’ve sent my husband when he fails to notice my “Does Tuesday morning work for you?” text sent two hours prior.
Things can go awry even when operator error isn’t involved. Our yoga teacher began our practice as she usually does, bringing us to a comfortable seated position and inviting us to concentrate on our breathing.
“Drop your right ear to your right shoulder,” she continued, “and extend your left arm to the side.”
“That might be beyond my current capabilities,” replied a loud voice.
Talking in yoga class being frowned upon, we all looked around to see which class member was being so disrespectful. It was not a class member, though. Our teacher uses her phone for background music, and somehow Siri had decided—unbidden—to join the class. Apparently, she is not very flexible.
The ever-presence of young grandchildren in our lives underscores the changing of times so vividly. When our oldest was three, we still had a landline with four extensions. One day when he and I were upstairs, he heard the phone ringing from downstairs and alerted me. I went to answer the upstairs phone, whose ringer was broken, and he said, “No, not that one. The one downstairs.”
I started with a thorough explanation of how extensions work before I realized that he had no need to ever possess that information. He would never use a landline, an answering machine, or a desk-top calculator.
Visiting with my Dallas doctor on Zoom saves me about five hours of road time. Downloading a book on Kindle saves a trip to the bookstore, where they will just have to order it anyway. I can let the exterminator into my house by operating my alarm system and front door lock from Switzerland.
The only tricky part is remembering the password.
It all begs the obvious question: What’s next? What will they come up with that will make the iPhone passe? Will my brainiac car fly to Dallas? Will a robot make lasagna?
There’s been lots of talk recently about artificial intelligence, which has apparently become so smart it could write this column for me if I asked it to. I guess that would render me obsolete.
Like I said. A double-edged sword.
