So, yesterday I saw this great thing. It was awesome and funny and I got an idea. I love it when I get ideas. My father-in-law was visiting us for a bit, and he has an iphone. Now, I don’t have an iphone, or any sort of smart phone because I’m cheap and because I don’t like leashes. I feel like carrying one of those around is like being hooked up to a leash all the time. I may cave in the future--I’ve caught myself checking out cell phone plans and such recently--but thus far, I’m not biting. Thus far… Anyway, he’s a grizzled old guy with big hands and bad eyes clutching a tiny iphone. He wanted to have the weather on his phone. I was typing on the computer, not much of anything but yet, I was dorking around a bit, and I didn’t bite as far as setting him up with a weather app. I passed it off to my 18 year old daughter. She doesn’t have an iphone either. But she is 18, so that makes her the de facto tech expert, at least when it comes to phones. I am STILL the reigning CHAMPEEN when it comes to computers in our home. I’m not THAT great, but hey, there are perks to being the big fish in the small pond. So, she goes and sits by grandpa and starts messing with his phone. She has several advantages over him when operating his phone. First, she has small fingers. I suggested he get a stylus to click the screen with, but nobody paid attention. So, she poked away at the screen. She also has much better eyesight than he. Another thing in her favor. She also grew up in a land where the school used Macs all the time. So she is into that whole Steve Jobs mindset--I am a PC, thank you. AND she is frickin’ 18. Just the very FACT of her age makes her infinitely more qualified to set up his phone. She had several questions for him as she pecked away, and he answered in his ironic grumpy-man voice. Turns out he didn’t know what an APP was. Okay. 5 minutes or so later, he had weather on his phone. Now, I have had similar experiences with several folks of his generation--and a few with folks in MY generation--my husband, for instance. They are not native techies. Couple that with bad eyesight, clumsy fingers, complete non-immersion in computers for most of their lives….the whole deal….and problems arise. For a few members of my family, I am tech-support, and they call me at various times to help them solve computer problems. These folks are in the older set. They can’t help it. This tech is NOT the way the world rolled for the majority of their lives. My dear grandmother was 94 when she died a couple years back--the television remote could cause her fits of anguish. Too many buttons. So, here is my idea. We need to set it up so 18 year olds do some sort of public service for folks in the 60-plus demographic. 2 years of being a Man-or-Woman Friday for the older generation that really wants to be connected with grandchildren via the web, really wants to use phones, really WANTS to have all that electronic magic in their lives, but they just can’t wrap their heads around it. And I’m not being cocky about my own abilities here---I have NO DOUBT that someday I WILL BE THAT GENERATION. The generation of people who has been left behind by the spinning gears of future tech, dazzled by the lights and sounds and possibilities, but not equipped to deal with the mindset required. And after 2 years of service, maybe these kids get to go to college for free or something. And that’s where my idea ends. I am not the person to go out and execute that, to figure out rules and regulations or how to pay for it or anything else. It was an idea, and maybe it turns out to be a bad one. Maybe it could be privatized into a business somehow. I don’t know. Most of you will probably be able to poke holes all the way through this multiple times, but it doesn’t matter. Because for a few shining minutes I watched it happen here on my couch. The youngers helping the elders in something meaningful, that would make life better, and it was perfect harmony. Maybe tech will get to Star Trek levels and all we will do is bark orders into the air--no knowledge of anything except speech will be required. Maybe we will have personal robots or something to take care of all this stuff for us. But it was beautiful, seeing that process of an 18 year old helping out a 68 year old. It had a symmetry to it, like art. I have to help my husband out all the time, and he’s 45. There isn’t much art there, because I am baffled how he has managed in the world for so long without knowing how to open Gmail. And we are rapidly becoming an old married couple, after all. I wonder if we will have grandkids, and if they will help US with our little electronic issues more patiently and effectively than our kids--our grandchildrens’ parents will. And so the circle forms a chain and goes off into the mists of the future-that-might-be. Perhaps the truest thing is this: In the future, I bet I will take any excuse--even my own ineptitude--to hang with the grandkids. Perhaps thats what was really going on yesterday after all. Hmmmmmm......
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:58:30 +0000
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