Saturday, July 8, 2017

they were really insistent...

...and I was getting thoroughly annoyed at the exceptionally poor service I was getting on my cell phone. Plus everyone who saw it seemed to find great amusement at the antiquity of the 'old school' quality of something that was so rare. I recently read about a museum of technology that had the earliest versions of home computers and those huge twenty pound bag-type mobile telephones in it as examples of how far we have advanced.

The lack of service at home was so irritating, I guess I convinced  myself. Partially due to no one else being persuasive enough to make me be willing to upgrade. I literally could not be in the house and successfully make calls - there was simply no service to be had indoors. Having to get up, go outside, and stand in the yard to make outgoing calls must have been The Last Straw. You know: the one that broke the camel's back, right?

When I grudgingly surrendered, and agreed to be dragged into the AT&T store, daughters took me in, and decided for me. If they were expecting me to be able to make an informed decision we would still be there. After talking to the service rep, they choose one they felt would be appropriate for the hopelessly tech-impaired  mom. All my info. was magically, mysteriously transferred to the new Samsung phone.Even though there was much hand holding, cajoling, encouragement, positive talk, it was a difficult process. When they left town to go home, and I was holding this new improved version I did not want or know how to manage, it was 'me vs the machine', with Me feeling woefully unprepared for the challenge.

This happened several weeks ago, when the daughters were here for Father's Day. I am still struggling with operating this complicated item. It took me three days after they left me here unsupervised to find out how to answer calls when it demands attention.  It has been up hill all the way, and a constant worry, not feeling fully trained and capable with this foreign device in my pocket/hand.

I was using the old school phone as an alarm clock, to get me up for being at work at 5 or 6 or 7 as needed. And after plenty of assistance in setting the alarm on the Samsung, I still did not fully trust it. After several days when it proved to be reliable, I accidentally deleted the app. so there was no alarm at all when I tried to set it before going to bed. In a panic mode, I scrambled around and found the old phone (the one designed for the simple-minded!), hoping to use it for getting up and out the door on time. As you might expect, the battery was very dead. But I plugged it in, and it worked. The screen says, every time I go to set the alarm: For Emergency Calls Only. Which suits me perfectly - my emergency was not having a reliable wake up call, when it vanished from the Samsung.

I am more than willing to ask young people for assistance with things that confound me. Have taken my computer into work more than once to ask kids to help me resolve a problem. Knowing they were born with technology in their hands, and take the ability to work with the mystery of micro-chips in stride. So I asked someone half my age at work to find my alarm clock, and he was handing it back in less than a minute. I still don't trust it completely, so will continue to keep the wee little flip phone at my bedside to chirp at me in the mornings.

You have no idea how impressed I was with myself when I found the calculator yesterday, giving me the ability to add and multiply. I am the one who readily confessed to be hopelessly math-impaired. Even with a device that does the figuring for me, I can add a column of numbers three times and get four different sums. In all honesty, I don't know how I found the calculator on the Samsung, and could only hope to find it again, if needed  - but I am gaining confidence, and learning to adapt.

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