Over 50

I received an email from a friend yesterday that is priceless. It really does reflect what life is like for people who are 50+

Life has changed so much in the last 50 (okay almost 60) years. I guess since the end of the second world war. Before that there was change.. electricity, automobiles, airplanes, but not so much technologically as in say the last 30 - 40 years.

Some background. When I was 5 we got our first telephone ever. My parents couldn't afford it but one of my sisters had been left standing waiting for a group from the church and no one showed up. The leaders couldn't reach my parents to tell them the event had been cancelled cause we had no phone. So they stretched the budget and got us a phone - a party line which most of you younger ones have never heard of. It wasn't like 1-800-Lavalife, it wasn't really a party. We had to share our phone line with someone else that we didn't know. Of course that did make for interesting listening if we picked up the phone to make a call and they were talking. Of course it wasn't a portable phone or a cell phone. It was a phone with a receiver that weighed about 10 pounds and you prayed that none of your friends would have a 0 in their phone number!

We didn't own a television until I was 10. It was a used black and white thing with rabbit ears and poor reception. By rabbit ears I mean these:

Not these

My mother didn't have a vacuum. We had hardwood floors so she used a dust mop and she had a carpet sweeper for our accent rugs in the livingroom/diningroom. She finally got a second hand canister vacuum when my parents were finally able to afford a modest home in 1960

She eventually got a more modern Hoover but still used this in the basement until the 1980's when her basement flooded.

Our car was a 1929 Model A Ford which my dad had owned since about 1939. He kept it up on blocks in the winter and drove it in the summer to get to our cottage and back. It didn't have GPS, it didn't even have a trunk. We 3 girls had to balance ourselves on the luggage stacked on the back seat.

I don' have a photo of the original but ours was green where this one is tan and it had those skinny rubber tires.

I could go on but enough... I just wanted to show the contrast between what I grew up with and what the world is like today. So here is the email.

Over 50

I thought about the 30 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 simple 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 [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and I 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 haven't figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to 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 reusable bags to avoid looking confused but I 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.

I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered,..... No, but I do toot a lot."

My gratitude for today. I'm grateful that I have email friends who send me things like this to help me start the day with a giggle.