& {sometimes} WHY

Back in October I rented a car to visit some friends in Ohio and do some research for my writing, and I came home feeling like I was on my way to becoming technologically obsolete. It wasn’t my friends who made me feel that way; it was the rental car.

Hubs and I own one car since we entered our golden years–a 2008 Impala with about 140,000 miles on it. He likes not having a payment. I’m not so sure. Regardless, we generally rent a car when we take a trip. I also have friends whose husbands aren’t quite so stingy about car payments, so I’ve seen keyless entries, synchronized hands-free calling and on-board GPS at work. But this trip, I was going by myself and would be the pilot.

Hubs went with me to pick up the rental, and he drove it back to our house while I followed in our dinosaur. After I packed my travel gear, we sat together in the driveway, where he went over all the car’s technology with me. He helped me sync my phone for hands-free calling or texting, and set up the coordinates for my first stop in the GPS. Then we took a test drive around the neighborhood, so I could play with the buttons as I drove and ask him questions.

All went well. “I got this,” I said and embarked.

Only I shouldn’t have turned the car off

A couple hours later, I arrived at my first stop–an historical museum in a small town. The research there went well, and a couple more hours later I returned to my vehicle. I knew how to get to the next town–I had lived there once–but I needed to find a restaurant for lunch and the library, which had moved since last I was there.

After trying to get the onboard computer to work again, I gave up and decided to go “old-school” by just using the GPS on my smartphone. That’s when I realized there was no signal. So I started toward the next town anyway and pulled over when the signal returned. Only I still couldn’t get my phone to resynchronize with the car’s on-board computer for hands-free use.

Old-school continued for the rest of the trip. It worked, of course, but oh, the waste of all the high-tech potential that car held!

Shifting gears

The other problem was the gear shift was in the console between the seats, and our clunker, which we’ve had since 2009, has it on the steering wheel. That, in itself, wasn’t too much of an impediment because I’ve owned cars with console gear shifts. Just not in a while. So whenever I would mistakenly try to shift from the steering wheel, I turned on the windshield wipers in the rental and sometimes the turn signals!

Kind of embarrassing.

Anyway, by the time I got home, I was fully exhausted from turning the windshield wipers off on a sunny day, jockeying back and forth with my phone to check the GPS, and trying to figure out how to find something decent to listen to on the onboard sound system.

And I felt totally useless.

I told my husband he was fast making me thoroughly dependent on him by not buying me a newer car, that to learn these systems one needed to use them daily. He wasn’t impressed.

If only it ended there

Then I got to thinking about how many other devices in our home only HE knows how to operate.

Now would be a good time to mention hubs has a degree in computer technology and 40-plus years experience developing and managing technology for corporations. He ENJOYS adding all those technology bells and whistles to our home because it’s who he is. What am I going to do if something happens to him?

I can handle the streaming on the television pretty well, as long as I’m using the existing channels provided by Roku or subscription and as long as I don’t move to a new place or replace any of the equipment. But we often watch classic movies he finds on YouTube or independent share sites, which he “casts” from an app on his phone. I don’t have that app, nor do I know all the ins and outs of using it.

Even the lights in our home could work against me in his absence. He’s integrated many of them with Alexa so they operate on voice commands. That’s fine, I get how to use Alexa. But what if she gets her wires crossed? I don’t know how to reboot her. I can unplug and replug, but that’s the extent of my prowess. I’ll be back to flipping switches in the dark.

“What if the bulbs go out?” I asked him once.

“They’re LED. They won’t for a long time,” he replied.

“But what if a long time passes and they eventually do and you’re not around. How will I know what to replace them with?”

There’s the vacuuming and reaching too

He’s the only one who know how to operate the robotic sweeper. He programmed its path on his computer and has an app on his phone for starting and stopping it while we’re out. We have an upright vacuum, too, but it bothers my back when I use it, so I’ll have to hire a cleaning lady. At least maybe THAT wouldn’t be so bad…

But then there’s the laundry room and kitchen cabinets. That’s a technical rather than a technological problem, but he’s the only one tall enough to reach beyond the second shelf in the kitchen and the first shelf in the laundry room.

I know what you’re thinking: get a step-stool. I have a great one he picked out for me that’s extremely stable. Only I’m not, and soon after purchasing it he forbid me to use it. I can barely lift it anyway. So if something happens to him, I’ll never be able to reach my baking dishes, two sets of vintage glassware we only use for special occasions, cleaning supplies, paper towels, toilet paper, garbage bags, some of the dishes and some of the spices.

I can probably start the electric mower he bought better than one with a pull cord, and I can always hire someone to cut the grass anyway. But how will I get the patio umbrella and furniture down and carried out back in the spring and put away again in the fall?

This is why old people move into assisted living, isn’t it?

Please, just kill me now.

Thankfully, I can operate my laptop well. I owe that to him too. He’s taught me so well that I can troubleshoot most issues I run across. But what if this PC fails or I spill coffee on it again and have to replace it, what then? Who will transfer all my stuff and get the new one up and running? Who will even pick the new one out?

Ditto the smartphone. Too bad it can’t make ME smarter, technology-wise, that is. I AM smart. I have a high IQ, like you know who. I just don’t have enough short-term memory to hold all the additional how-to data the world keeps throwing at me.

I remember hearing cultural anthropologist Jennifer James speak in the mid-1990s on changing paradigms in business. To throw in a little humor with the idea that nothing stays the same, she mentioned how even what we look for in a mate is different than it used to be. For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, height was important to spot wild game and see enemies coming, she said, “but these days, she said, you should marry a geek.”

I did, and look where it got me.