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I Am Of The Underwired Generation

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Ha!  Caught ya lookin!  I’ll bet you thought this post was all about bras, didn’t you?  Well, nope, it isn’t……in fact, I never have been underwired in that way, and never will be.  My ribs get in the way.  Now that you know more about me than you ever wanted to know, I’ll explain myself. 

In this case, it’s computer-savvy-ness that I’m talking about.  I can barely skid along the surface of the ice with all the technology we have going on all around our ears these days.  Scratch that surface and I fall in and flounder almost every time.  Obviously, I do use one or I wouldn’t be here blogging away and certainly, I wouldn’t have come this far along on producing a book.  So, I have learned what I need to know as I go, but one little test and I’m in over my head, wishing for a geek.

This brain was born too long ago to have grown up in a comfort zone with anything having the prefix of cyber.  I’m still just a little wary of it….as in afraid I’ll erase or choke something with the push of a button.  And as in a rather large lack of curiosity about what is under the hood.  All I want is for the car to run and if it doesn’t or if it needs a new gadget applied, well, duh?  Where are those geeks when you need them?

I think I’ve really done a number on myself by ordering the Microsoft Office Suite 2007. It was an impulse buy, but one I’ve been needing to make for quite awhile if I’m going to consider myself a writer of any dimension.  Yup, here we are marching into 2009, so I’ll probably soon be outdated again, anyway, but at least not so far as I have been.  So, I own the thing, but it’s still not installed because I have to get 2003 out of there and I’m scared to touch it.  Oh, where is my ten-year-old grandson when I need him?  Way off in Colorado, that’s where.  But, he could do this with his eyes shut……in his sleep…….with one hand tied behind him.

Brains are different now than they were in “My Day.”  Pretty soon, we Dodos will all be dead…..yes we will!  Another fifteen, twenty years, max, for most of us, and we will have cleared the stage and left things to the natural-born robo-minds.  Then, the geeks will have no one to rescue. 

I can’t even imagine the possibilities that will be unleashed when today’s babies grow up.  Their parents are so much the Wired Generation accustomed to tiny objects in their hands that text and call and play games with them.

I don’t even aspire to that stuff.  The big and the basic is almost too much for me.  I think that’s one reason why rough travel is so appealing. It isn’t wired very much……I was about to say it isn’t wired at all, but it is.  Nowadays, we all make airlines, hotel and hostel reservations and do all sorts of advance research, plus blogging and emailing, at the ubiquitous internet cafes all over the world and on our multiple computers at home……how did we ever get along without them?…… but, even those now qualify as rough categories. 

So, that which becomes familiar to us is rough, like an old shoe, and we can enjoy it easily, without getting all “het up” about it.  But, that which is new and strange to us, even though it could ultimately save us a whole lot of time and effort, usually makes life so difficult for awhile and wastes a lot of our time sending us into dead ends that the older we get, the more we put off trying to use it.  And the less we see a reason for needing to use it.  That’s why you will possibly always have an underwired generation of some sort.

I’ve found my sticking point and made peace with it.  Where will yours come along?  And when?  If that’s unthinkable to you now, don’t worry, you’ll be happy with yourself just the way you are.