Thursday, December 11, 2014

Life as a Technophobe

I have a confession to make: I am a technophobe. I may appear to be a normal person, but if I'm going to trade numbers with you, I'll probably fish a pen and a piece of paper out of my humongous mom-purse and write yours down while you type mine into your sleek little phone.

I'd rather email you than text you. And if you text me, I probably won't get it  because I rarely check the messages on my phone.

People try to text my landline all the time, because I give out my home number and they assume it's my cell. After all, who doesn't use their cell phone?

It's mostly because I'm cheap. Sure, I'd use a smart phone if someone gave it to me and paid for my data plan. But they don't, so I'm sticking with my dumb phone and my prepaid minutes.

To be clear, we're not talking about just any dumb phone. It's a dumb phone from 2004.

Life as a Technophobe -- I may appear to be a normal person, but if I'm going to trade numbers with you, I'll probably fish a pen and a piece of paper out of my humongous mom purse.  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Bet you haven't seen one of these babies for a while. Or ever, depending on how old you are.

But wait, it gets better. It's a dumb phone from 2004 that is also broken. And since I really only use it for emergencies and so my kids' schools can reach me when I'm out, I'm too cheap to replace it.

Life as a Technophobe -- I may appear to be a normal person, but if I'm going to trade numbers with you, I'll probably fish a pen and a piece of paper out of my humongous mom purse.  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
The back of my phone. You're embarrassed for me now, right?

When it comes to texting, I'm your 80-year-old grandmother. Probably because my phone is so old that I have to press the 7 button four times if I want to type an 'S,' which slows down the process considerably. I understand that turning on predictive texting could help me speed things up, but I turned it off after writing my very first text, when I started to spell "This" and it wrote "Thighs??"

Yes, because that's obviously exactly what I wanted to say.

So maybe the problem would be solved if I got a new phone? Sadly, no. The real problem goes much deeper than that.

I just have this thing where I need to be able to see writing on a physical piece of paper. E-books are something I've tried to enjoy; I just can't do it. I love blogs and I get my news online, but I get antsy if I try to relax with my Kindle and read a long passage from a novel. I need a real, actual book with pages and a cover that exists in my hands as a bound volume.

There's something about writing on paper, and reading words written on paper, that I just can't let go of. This is my calendar:

Life as a Technophobe -- I may appear to be a normal person, but if I'm going to trade numbers with you, I'll probably fish a pen and a piece of paper out of my humongous mom purse.  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
My old-school paper calendar. Don't be afraid, children.

Not only do I like looking at my kids' artwork every month (they make me a new calendar every Christmas), but I like being able to see the whole week or month at a glance and not have to scroll around trying to do that.

Phillip hates the paper calendar system. He wishes everything was online so we could both edit, add, or check things from wherever we are. As it is, he has to either call me or wait until he gets home, which is soooooo 1995. (Can you believe that billions of people in history lived their entire lives like that? Poor saps.)
Life as a Technophobe -- I may appear to be a normal person, but if I'm going to trade numbers with you, I'll probably fish a pen and a piece of paper out of my humongous mom purse.  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

I partly blame timing for my technology paralysis. When I was in middle school, being on the cutting edge meant using a friend's dial-up connection on the desktop computer in her family room so you could get online and take turns typing in a chat room.

In high school none of us carried around our own devices, unless you count Tamagotchis. But you know who did? Zack Morris, and he was the man carrying his brick phone around Bayside High.

The big tech explosion didn't happen until I'd already reached adulthood and was already starting lectures to my kids with the words, "When I was your age..."

And then it was too late.

I know it's not a perfect excuse. Most of your mothers and grandmothers are probably more tech-savvy than I am. But it will have to do. I missed the tech revolution by about 5 years, but I'm not yet old enough for it to acceptable for me to refuse to adopt new technology.

It could be too late for me, but my kids' classrooms have smart boards and iPad carts and Chromebooks and they use Google docs for their homework, so I think that somehow, they'll be okay.

Maybe they'll even explain it all to me one day.



Update: Unremarkable Files is now on FacebookPinterest, and Twitter! (I know, I'm as surprised as you are.)

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

LOL I loved this!!

First off, I used to have the EXACT same phone (but I ditched mine about 3 years ago). I miss that Nokia default ring tone.

I too can not read ebooks. I NEED to hold the book and smell/turn the pages.

Thanks so much for sharing and for linking this post up to the #SHINEbloghop!

Wishing you a lovely day.
xoxo

Katelyn Fagan said...

Ha! The ONLY reason I do have a smart phone now IS because it was for a blogging opp and they paid for the phone and a month of service. ha ha ha. I am SO like you and totally use a landline as my primary phone number I give to people. I hate checking my phone for texts and messages. No one calls me like ever anyway. Your phone is hilarious though.

Unknown said...

I have eBook issues! I can sit and read a "real book" in no time, but the digital versions take me eons of time to read. I don't know why... I also don't prefer to text, but I can get by. I do have an iPhone (5 something), but in many ways, since I think we're about the same age, I often feel just a little behind on the tech age. I feel stupid texting part of the time, and I'm likely to go to Facebook on the computer to message a person who is using their phone because I just can't deal with texting - typing is so much easier! Greatly enjoyed this!