My Twitter don't tweet ----or---"I'm a bi-sacksual"

Things are spiraling out of control. I think I have become lost in a world of electronic madness.

One of my sons informed me this week that my cell phone has become obsolete and I must head down to the Cell Phone store and get a phone that is contemporary with the time.

I pointed out that the fancy Razor/Slim line phone with camera built in that he made me trade my perfectly good flip-top Motorola cell phone for two years ago still works per fectly fine. Well, except for the camera thing. Never could figure that out... Even the few times I actually did take pictures I couldn’t figure what to do with them and gave up.

That is except when I would push the wrong button and take a video of the ceiling or my feet.

Seems the issue is that I am unable to text with the tiny little 3 character buttons. "Hi, son," would come out looking like, "Gh Qmo." My grandkids have even spoken to me about my crazy text messages. Give me a break. What ever happened to actually talking on a phone? Isn’t that what they were invented for?

They want me to get one of those phones that you can turn upside down and sideways and has a typewriter keyboard with key s about one-eighth the size of my pinky finger.

One of my four sons is a realtor whose real occupation is fly –fishing.. "Way to go, son."
Or in my text language, "Xbz um Io, rmo."

We were floating the Yakima River in his guide quality drift boat south of Ellensburg , Washington . We were miles from anything remotely resembling civilization. Rock canyon walls were on either side of us. Bear with me as I try to explain this strange thing.

His "Blackberry" rang. It was blue and I asked him why it wasn’t called a Blueberry. He shook his head with that ‘dealing with an elder despair’ look I get a lot these days. It was another realtor who called to say that the sellers he represented had agreed to my son’s client’s changes and he had the signed documents in hand.

My son told him to FAX the papers to his office and he would get them signed and Faxed back, to close the deal that morning. A minute later the phone rang and he hit a few buttons and looked over the FAX, now on the Yakima River with us.

He then called his clients and told them he was Faxing the papers to the m to sign and asked them to FAX them back to his office.. While he was waiting, he hooked into a fat rainbow a nd was just releasing this 22 inch beauty as his phone rang again with the signed FAX from his clients.

He called the other realtor and told him he was sending the signed papers back by FAX. The deal was closed. He smiled and just said, "You are a little behind the times, Dad." I guess I am.

I thought about the sixty million dollar a 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=2 0simple 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 p hone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Nobles talking to my wife as every one in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and 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 h aven’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 re-usable bags to avoid looking confused but 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.
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(I did not write this, just wish I had)

The first Blackberries that I can recall were out in the latter part of the 90s. I was condemned to "own" one because no one was willing to tell our techno-geeks to just sit down, shut up, and color. These damned toys would periodically just show up on my desk under cover of darkness, and sometime the following morning there would be some earnest-looking young geek cooling his / her heels in my waiting room so that they could come in and explain to me the wonderfulness of their latest solution in search of a problem, and how to use it. I would smile benignly, thank them for their time and trouble, and send them on their way. I would then toss the latest electronic crime against nature into a drawer in my credenza in which I buried all generations, past and current, of equally unwanted electronic gizmos, never again to see the light of day. And there it would stay. I suspect that they were in there reproducing, much like coat hangers in a neglected closet. I was more than senior enough to get away with this decidedly antisocial behavior. I'm no Luddite, but I still hated the concept of an electronic umbilical cord. I really don't get the whole 24/7/365 connectedness thing.

Ultimately, I retired waaaay early. I am proud to note that I do not own so much as a cell phone. If you want to call me, you have to call me at home. And if I should be so moved as to actually answer the phone, we can talk. Otherwise, email me.

I am at this point resisting face book and the invitations to be friends.
:)

Why on earth would anyone want to create those sorts of highly personal electronic footprints for all to see? Their so-called security would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that many actually believe that it is reasonably robust.

Keep resisting!

When I get an invitation I click in and join as a friend. Then I write them a thank-you note and say: I only do email, but I appreciate the thought.
Then
late
night
if I am just a little bit bored, I go and read their little communications and look at their sometimes interesting pictures, and keep up with what they are up to. It takes a few minutes and feels really wrong.
I am a once or twice a week facebook lurker.

I don't blog, face, my, twit, or nuthin'.
Ain't agonna, neither.
Bah, humbug.
Oh, and I turn my cellphone on if I need to make a call and I'm not home.

And email has become a kudzu-like monster that must be cut back every morning.
It's become more of a pain-in-the-butt than a cheap, quick means of communication.
Maybe I'll change my email addy again.
:-(