Technological advances have given us a staggering number of communication options. That means my kids now have unlimited ways to ignore me.
Our oldest daughter, Liz, spends a lot of time on the road for work and she has a hands-free phone that runs through the radio. She calls sometimes when she’s driving. We made a major tactical error with the youngest, however, by signing up for an unlimited text plan when Gwen went off to college. That was the last time we heard her voice.
It isn’t that she never contacts us; we get the occasional text. But I refused to learn how to text for a good long time. “If they loved us, they’d call!” I’d say to my husband. Ever practical, he shrugged, asked if I ever wanted to hear from the girls again, and dove headfirst into the world of LOLs and emoji. Eventually I caved.
For me, texting is a tortuous affair involving one tapping finger and tongue-sticking-out-the-corner-of-the-mouth concentration. This is in marked contrast to my daughters. Each could knock out a novel using just their Flying Thumbs of Fury. They can text faster than I can type using every one of my fingers and the occasional toe. They’re even faster than I was back in high school typing class when I was at the top of my game.
I also resisted the newfangled Facebook craze for ages and eventually joined only to check up on the kids. Gwen ignored my friend request for a year. I was thrilled when she finally accepted, but discovered she never posts anything. She said she and her friends now use Instagram and Snap-chat because Facebook is too crowded. The end of that sentence was unspoken, but I heard it loud and clear: crowded with old people like you, Mom.
It’s not as if I’m a techno-dinosaur; I use computers and social media for work. I’m not like my parents, bless their hearts. They were happy as clams when they had flip phones and an old, Windows XP desktop to forward email jokes. Then some well-meaning grandchild upgraded them to the latest MacBook and iPhones and set them up on Facebook, Twitter and who knows what else. No one has heard a peep out of them since, technologically speaking. They’d be marooned if they didn’t have a landline.
Although it seems like technology is conspiring with my kids to keep one step ahead of me, I’m not giving up. I’m going to check the local community college for adult education classes in Insta-Chat-a-Roo. I’m also going to keep setting a good example by how great I am at staying in touch with their grandparents.
After all, I post a message on my parents’ Facebook wall at least once a week.
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Very timely, Peg. My Facebook stream is also too crowded. So many of my friends use it to advertise their positions on politics or the countless other causes they seem to think we should all be interested in!
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I try to stay off Facebook – it’s such a huge time suck, isn’t it?
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Probably not as consuming as Pinterest, though I’m not on Pinterest, so I don’t know. I can’t even keep up with my Email inbox, so there is no way I’m going to give anyone the ability to text me. (My husband tells the family not to bother trying to text me, because mostly my phone battery is dead…)
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Peg, I think you can rest on your laurels as a blogger extraordinaire and a woman who can photoshop blond hair onto anyone. The rest? Eh. Who needs ’em.
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Some call it photoshopping – I like to call it high art, Elyse.
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What more do you need?
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Hilarious as always…and so true. I am getting better at one finger texting but somehow send the wrong messages to the wrong people.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one – it takes me forever to do a text!
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A lot of smartphones have an voice entry option, which can make writing text messages so much faster. It’s like you’re making a phone call to your daughter by talking into your phone, and the phone converts your phone conversation into the text message format your daughter can understand.
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I shudder to think what kind of message would be sent, given how often Auto Correct changes words on me, thereby totally changing the meaning.
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There is also a little-known feature that allows you to turn off Autocorrect.
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I’m kinda in a hurry to stop to comment, Peg….check your phone for a text….
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Umm…could you send a carrier pigeon?
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LOVE this post, and it says an awful lot of things I think …. in a loop… inside my head. 🙂
~ Cobs.
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If you have loops repeating in your head, that might be a sign to seek professional help. Just telling you as a friend, Cobs.
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LOL … ah, no, I didn’t mean ‘loop’ in that sort of way. I mean .. every now and again I’ll think about how new technology appears to slowly invade lives, leaving (mostly youngrer) people with socialising problems.
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I want to take that Insta-Chat-a-roo class too!! Too funny… I was an early FB adopter but like your daughter, my sons have migrated to a “less crowded” platform. And because I have sons, I’d be thrilled with a text now an then. I’m just sayin’… 🙂
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Exactly. My niece calls her mom several times a day – what do I have to do to get that kind of communication?
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Do you REALLY want an answer to that? It may require some sacrifices that are outside your religious scruples…
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Good point.
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Dear Ms. Artist,
Could you please assemble all your blogs’ artwork somewhere for my perusal? Truly, that’s the funniest dam shi! It just makes me laugh whether I read the blog or not.
Funny, funny lady.
🙂
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Aren’t you sweet! My “artwork” was born of my inability to figure out Photoshop, so all I can do is the basic Paint program that came with the computer 20 years ago. Another example of how technologically challenged I am.
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You are the Paint Queen. I bow to you.
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Spot on, as usual Peg. I too would prefer a keyboard where I can type really fast, instead of the one key poking. Oh well, the one thing that remains constant is change. 🙂
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So true, Tar. And I don’t like it. Tell Change to stop, will ya?
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We used to say in marketing , once elementary school teachers adopt something and use it in their lessons, it’s over and the trendsetters have moved on.
Once I had a prof. that irritatedly slammed down the text for the course we had signed up for and said “I have to teach you this, but I’m telling you this all outdated and you shouldn’t bother to learn it.”
I’m signing up for that class, too…but only if there are follow up sessions on “forget all that you just leaned – here’s the newest thing….”
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You really had a prof who said that? And right after you spent in the neighborhood of $200 for the obsolete text book? Hmmmph.
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required course, too. GAG
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All the kewl kids know Facebook is DEAD. I can’t believe that company has the price/earning valuation it does. It’s the next MySpace.
There’s no need to TYPE into your phone. The voice recognition functionality is pretty advanced. Speak slowly and clearly and it’ll type for you. And be glad you don’t have any kind of accent, or that wouldn’t be an option for you.
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Yeah, I’m sure that would work just as fabulously as auto correct, which helps me send out some of the STUPidist text messages ever. Although I really do want to be kewl…
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Would it translate Mainer-Hickese?
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They’re going to develop a filter for that right after they finish the filter to decipher martian.
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The world is clamoring for it.
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It is?!?!
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The part of it I inhabit, at any rate.
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I have the speech-to-text thing on my phone, which translates voice mail messages into lines of print on my screen.
I’ve received some of the FUNNIEST messages this way…I don’t want to say speech-to-text doesn’t work, but it’s certainly half-deaf.
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As I told Exile above, I’m sure that wouldn’t work for me. But I guess I owe it to technology to at least try the function. I got a new phone a month ago and I’m still trying to figure stuff out. Voice to text is now on the list.
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I’ve had my smart phone over a year, now…it’s still smarter than I am 😦
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I hate hate hate texting with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. It takes me about 20 minutes to text a simple message. I have giant fat fingers and bad eyesight. Technology is slowly killing my soul. I envy my mom who actually has managed to live 82 years without knowing what a computer or the Internet is. Oh to have that simple innocence again!
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But without the internet, I would never have met you, Miss Darla, and jezzum crow, that would be tragedy!
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Dammit, you are so right. The Internet is awesome .
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I think the whole internet is too crowded. That’s why I’m looking into opening a bird sanctuary that specializes in carrier pigeons.
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Great idea! Don’t forget bird-poop shields.
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I don’t get snapchat. I’m on FB, am the Twitter master, and post on Instagram and Tumblr, but I can’t wrap my mind around SnapChat. Can you text me your notes after class?
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I’ll send them via carrier pigeon. Don’t mind the bird poop.
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Peg, a lot of it is a mystery to me too – I know that’s probably hard for you to believe, what with me being so young and hip ‘n all, but it’s true. I have facebook down, and I’ve always been a huge fan of texting, much prefer to write my messages to people than to talk to them. Twitter’s fine,bBut SnapChat, Instagram, other ones, no idea. But really it’s how we’re supposed to be with modern stuff – ahead of our parents, but behind our kids, right?
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A young hip chick like you, VJ? I’m shocked that you don’t have it all nailed down!
I guess you’re right about this being the natural order of things. But I want to be the hip, young one in the equation – when did THAT dynamic change?
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It changed when our kids were old enough to tell us that it had.
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I saw a woman standing in line texting so fast that her thumbs were a blur. I could do that, too. Here, let me try: ghsjkfhdksuhfajhkauhajsdfhjdhfljadhfjhdflajfhljahfdajkhfjahf.
That was fun!
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And I’m sure you meant every word of it, right, Lorna?
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Abso-posi-lutely!
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