As an indie author I have found myself learning all kinds of new things. I had a very basic knowledge of Word until a couple of years ago and that has improved immensely. I can format books to go on Amazon, B&N and OmniLit. I have learned to tweet, create a character page on facebook, make that character talk on facebook, and I created and use this blog.
I was feeling quite proud. Until last week. Enter the Smartphone. Dear God, please forgive me for all of the times I lost patience with my mother when she could not figure out voicemail! This phone sits and glares at me, daring me to push a button and try to figure out what to do after doing so.
I can't even figure out how to add phone numbers to my contacts! It imported my google contacts for email and it imported my friends on Facebook. Most of those friends don't list a phone number. There has to be an easy way to add a phone number, but I simply get nowhere when I try.
As for other functions, I get screens when I push a button that don't appear the next time I push it. Perhaps they will never appear again. Or maybe they will appear out of nowhere, while I am driving, only to taunt me before disappearing once again into the vast frontier of cyberspace.
My neighbors (who are Gideons's parents) have endlessly worked with me to get me up to date with a scanner (I had a fax/printer older than Methusda), different way to connect to the internet (through that darn Smartphone...if I can remember how) and ye olde Smartphone. They are patient and kind, but must think I am two levels below Dunderhead. Jen will show me how to enter contact phone number today, she says.
In the meantime, there are red thingys indicating something I should be aware of but when I click on them nothing happens. The little instruction book assumes you are not still back in the days of flip phones and don't need your hand held. I don't just need my hand held, I need CPR!
It just made a noise. When I went to look at it, I could see nothing new for me to check out, inspect, read, or mistakenly delete. Was it laughing at me?
I bet so.
Well, I am going to have the last laugh. I will not only learn how to work it, I will make it sing some dorky song every time it rings and perhaps find some humiliating skin, or picture, or screen, or whatever that it must always wear. If you can do that. If not, I will tie a bow on it and then call it Big Boy. It is going to learn some manners yet!
There is one consolation in life. So far, technology has not managed to make a corkscrew too complicated for me to operate. There is a God after all.
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