TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
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
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LIFE & STYLE
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