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Culture
Bridging the High Tech Generation Gap - One Gadget at a Time
by Patricia Alfano
Many years ago on her birthday, my mother anxiously opened one of her gifts. It was a camera. A puzzled look crossed her face as she turned the object around in her hands and studied its buttons and hinges. She carefully put it back in the box and graciously thanked everyone.
When she died, we found the camera still in its box, tucked away in her underwear drawer.
My parents’ expertise with anything high or even low tech, was practically non-existent; which is probably why they were so ecstatic when my brother Don chose to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Becoming an engineer was the next best thing to his becoming a priest—and he received the same amount of adulation for his decision.
I remember when I was a teenager and would come home to find Don wiring the strangest things together. His passion for electrical engineering sparked him to conduct such experiments as having the oven turn on when the phone rang; or the television switch off when the bathroom light was flicked on.
He drove us all crazy.
The basement in our home was filled with our extended family’s television sets, radios and anything else of an electronic nature, which they left for my brother to fix. At the time, none of us realized that later in life his tinkering would pay off with numerous patents for his gizmos and inventions.
In complete contrast to my brother, my parents struggled with each new technological invention. For example, when the VCR came along, their attempt to use it provided more entertainment than the television did—and fodder for numerous VCR stories.
“You mean I can tape ‘Search for Tomorrow,’ go have coffee at Annette’s house, then come back and watch it anytime?” My mother asked, fingering the remote. “How does this work?”
Several months later, she still couldn’t understand how to operate the VCR. My brother drew her pictures, wrote step-by-step detailed instructions and patiently navigated her fingers around the buttons. Her solution was to have him do the programming, which worked until he decided to get married and move out. That day she cried. Not because her baby was leaving, but because neither she nor my father had yet to figure out how to program the darned thing.
“I have no use for it,” is my father’s retort when we tell him he needs to get this or that new device.
My brother bought a cell phone for my father so that we could keep better track of his whereabouts. At 92, his stubborn, independent streak was causing us to worry. He fervently fought—and lost—the argument over having to take it with him whenever he left his apartment.
“Just let me program the cell phone for you so that all you have to do is push one button to reach anyone,” was my son’s plea as he watched my father call at least four people by mistake because he was selecting the wrong numbers and pushing the wrong buttons.
“I don’t want the cell phone,” he protested, accenting the phone part of the term as he pronounced the name of the despised object with a slight Italian accent. “I have no use for it. I don’t understand the language.”
Language?
I didn’t know what he meant until I started having my own problems trying to keep up with the latest cyberspace vernacular. I complained to my unsympathetic son that Yelp, Hulu and Twitter sound more like the names we gave to various dances back in the day instead of a means to communicate. Every time I think I’ve made progress, some other website, software or code word swoops down from cyberspace and leaves me in the high tech dust.
But, it’s not all bad. Many of the gadgets that have made it into my family have provided us with enough laughter to fill our hearts for a long time.
My son visited my father recently and tried to talk him into getting a personal computer. He brought his own computer along to show how the camera and programs such as Skype could enable one to actually see the other person during a conversation.
Miles away, I patiently waited with my own computer set to begin our conversation. After what seemed like an eternity, my dad’s image finally appeared on the screen.
“Just push here,” my son instructed.
“Yeah,” my father mumbled.
“Now just…” my son began to direct.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Wait! That’s not the right key!”
“Yeah. I don’t want to do this.”
“But, you can see your daughter on the computer.”
“If I want to see your mother, I’ll go visit. I have no use for this.”
Patiently, my son finally got my father to operate the computer correctly so that he could see me as we spoke. Unfortunately, all I saw was the top of my dad’s head, and my son standing behind him trying his best to hide his frustration.
As much as I try to keep up with it all, I’ve recently begun to feel like a high tech has-been. I don’t own a basic cell phone, let alone one that takes pictures, tweets, plays music and flushes the toilet. I still have a Walkman and just recently got rid of my old VCR. My son rolls his eyes when I wring my hands with worry after he changes my homepage and I can’t get the original one back. My Apple computer is over 10 years old; I rarely use the laptop I bought; and I still have a cassette player in my 1997, stick-shift truck.
But I try. And so did my mother. The year after the camera fiasco, my brother decided to buy her an electric pasta machine since she loved to cook. I can still remember seeing her giddy reaction as she lovingly took it out of the box. She figured out how the gnocchi, sardi, cavatelli, rigatelli, fettuccine, ravioli, lasagna and spaghetti attachments all worked within an hour. She quickly learned how to manipulate the machine to adjust the thickness of her homemade dough within measurements that would impress a rocket scientist.
She wore out that machine and many more that followed. Over the years, as we all sat around the table enjoying her delicious pasta, we knew just what we would be buying her for her next birthday.
Patricia Alfano lives in beautiful Ocean Beach, CA and works at a local university. Contact her at pat_alfano@hotmail.com or visit her blog at www.bohemianopus.com.