Technologically challenged

I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent person. I have an advanced professional degree from a respected school.  I have a job that requires me to use my brain on a regular basis.  I am usually able to decipher those written instructions that are part of every “some assembly required” item.

But, I seem to be flummoxed by technology. 

I have been blogging here for over  a month now.  I follow several other blogs.  I see that these blogs have many little items on the left side of their blog.  I see that they have “followers”.  I see that they all give each other awards.  I have noticed two primary blog sites.  I really don’ t know the difference between them. 

I was very proud of myself to have downloaded the photo that is at the top of my blog site.  I even had to crop it to fit into the header.  But, beyond that, I feel totally at a loss.  I don’t know what a “widget” is, or why I might want one.  I certainly don’t plan to pay for the honor of baring my soul to all of the  blogosphere.  I finally figured out the tags and the tag surfer features.  I have no idea what most of the other things are that are listed here.

I have read the “instructions” on the website.  They are total gobbledygook to me. I haven’t been able to figure them out. Have you read them?  I swear that it requires a degree in computer science to even begin to understand them, let alone make them work.

I can recall when “touch tone” phones first hit the world.  I know, I am VERY old.  In the beginning, they charged extra for the touch tone service.  I refused the pay, when the dial worked fine.  I was even the subject of a column in the newspaper by a person who wrote about curmudgeonly people regularly.  I didn’t get the touch tone service until it had been free for quite some time.

I am still using a desktop computer.  I couldn’t tell you how many gigs, or megabytes, or ram is in it.  It works, for the most part.  My daughter-in-law just broke the screen on her laptop, and has been reduced to using my son’s “clunky college desktop computer”, as she called it.

My husband and I resisted cell phones until just a couple of years ago.  He is the one who finally broke down and bought them.  I had felt that I didn’t necessarily want people to be able to reach me all of the time.  Voicemail messages were good enough.  I still don’t know how all of the features work, I don’t text, and I rarely use the camera on it. But I will admit that I use it a lot for phone calls.

As between my husband and I, I probably know more about how to use the various programs on the computer.  That’s not much.  He still knows how it works.  I don’t really have a clue.  Between the two of us, we don’t have much more knowledge than our granddaughter (who is nearly 3!).

I guess that this is the sign of growing older.  I am not interested in some of the newer technology.  My life is just fine.  I don’t need to text, I don’t need to look up anything on the internet while I am talking on my phone, and I certainly don’t have to have a laptop computer when my desktop is just fine.

We do, however, have a gps.  It is basic, just gives the directions.  THIS is helpful.  I have very little sense of direction, and my husband thinks he has lots.  He hates to ask for directions. Now this is technology we can use!  It is simple, it is practical.   This technology may save our marriage!

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