It’s not enough to be almost sixty-eight years old and trying to keep up with technology – now I’m trying to bring a friend into this century. Believe it or not, she still has a rotary phone! If you met her, you would think her to be a modern, up to date woman, dressed in high fashion, hair done in newest style and an extremely knowledgeable woman in conversation. But for some unknown reason, she has not become a part of the techie generation.
Figuring a cell phone would be the easiest communication item with which to begin, I bought the simplest flip top version I could find with large numbers on the keypad. It does nothing except let the owner call people, let people call the owner and, of course, take pictures. Getting online would be saved for another time.
“Where’s the wire? I saw a wire in the box,” said Mable.
“Here it is. Where is a convenient place to plug it in?”
“I don’t think that cord is long enough. I walk all over the room when talking on my current one.” She stretched the cord with the plug and shook her head.
I laughed. “You can walk all over the house and the yard with this phone or chat while in the store or just about anywhere.”
She eyed the short cord even harder, disbelief shining in her eyes. I plugged one end of the cord into the wall and the other into the cell phone. The screen lit up showing a battery being charged in the center.
I took her to lunch giving the phone time to charge before we returned.
The more I explained the phenomena of cell phones, the more excited she became. Back at her house, I unplugged the phone, dialed the number of my own cell and handed her the flip phone.
She put it to her ear as I answered my own.
“Hello, how do you like it?” I asked.
She moved the phone down to her mouth. “I think I like the old one better. It was big enough to cover my ear and mouth at the same time.” She shifted it back to her ear.
“Leave it at your ear when you talk. I can hear you. See I’m not moving mine back and forth and it’s smaller than yours. Oh, and lower your voice a bit. You don’t have to raise it to talk.”
Gradually the thrill of having a phone to carry everywhere made it imperative that she try it in various rooms, in the yard, in her car until she firmly believed a cord was unnecessary for anything except charging the cell.
“Want to learn how to take pictures?” I asked.
“We didn’t pick up any film.” Yes, she still used cameras that required film. Patiently I explained film was no longer necessary, especially if using a cell phone to take pictures.
For the next hour, she snapped pictures of everything inside and out of the house.
“Do I send the phone to the drugstore?”
“Why would you do that?”
“To get the pictures developed.”
“Oh, no. That’s where your new computer comes in. We just send the pictures to the computer and voila’ you can print them with your new printer.”
“Okay, but I don’t know how to get the phone into the computer.”
I sighed. That would be a lesson for another day.