Strong, Silent Type

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My husband is generally a man of few words and not someone earlier in our marriage I would have pointed to as a philosopher, but things change. Steve is Executive Vice President of Prime Lending. It’s a big job. Neither of us participate on social media and sometimes I feel like everyone in the world except us loves it. One day I asked him why he’s not on social media and his response was rather breathtaking.

“First of all, I don’t think I’m all that interesting and I don’t find anyone else all that interesting either. I aspire to a state of grace, not perfection. I always had pressure to be perfect and I’ve learned it’s not realistic. You can always be graceful and elegant, but you cannot be perfect.”

This must have been something that had been on his mind. The first sentence answers the question about social media. The other three seem unrelated to the question but so eloquently communicate something he’s learned over the years that he has obviously embraced wholly and make him seem pretty interesting.

It’s been fascinating over the past 20 some odd years watching this man grow, change and evolve. My bohemian albeit extremely talented and affluent brother once referred to him as “a banker with a soul.”

Amen

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I Hate Facebook

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I was on Facebook once for about a minute.  I know everyone loves it but I hated it.  Someone told me it is a way to stay connected to the outer world.  What’s an outer world? The twilight zone?  All I saw were peoples photos and comments about seeing a new hot movie, shopping at a new mall or just returning from a trip to the Bahama’s.  Hardly outer worlds.  I saw strange greetings to peoples loved ones on birthdays and anniversaries which in my humble opinion is private stuff.  I tired of pictures of kids winning soccer matches, people running marathons and new babies.  Do you really care about all this with more than a few people?  And if you did care why not meet for coffee or talk on the phone?

I said all this to someone younger than me.

“Nooooo!” she said, “you are missing the point!”

“Really?” I replied, “which point…..outer worlds?”

“It’s a really good way of keeping in touch with….” her voice trailed off.

“People you don’t want to stay in touch with?” I asked.

She blushed.

I rest my case.

 

Technology Resistance

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I’m not that scared of blogging, but learning how was hard for me. While I’ve never been formally diagnosed with Dyslexia, I know I have it. For years I wondered why a chicken place would call itself Chic-A-Fil. I finally asked my husband, “What the heck does Chic-A-Fil mean? Why would a fast food place call itself that? It just doesn’t make any sense!”

“Sweetheart,” he said, knowing well this little disorder in my brain, “it’s Chic-Fil-A, and it’s a word play on chicken filet.”

I was unwillingly dragged to Texas, had serious culture shock and as an outlet started writing about my observations. I thought my stories were funny so I emailed them to friends and family.
“This needs to be a blog,” I heard back from a couple professional writers in the group, so here we are.

When my grandmother was 10 years older than I am now, the new cutting edge, technological breakthrough was the telephone message machine. After buying my grandmother a new radio with a digital station display, which she rejected in favor of her old-fashioned dial station display, I knew she wasn’t exactly keeping up with the times. However, I was tired of calling repeatedly trying to catch her at home, so I bought her the new technology.

“Nana, I bought you a present and here it is.” I said.

“What is that?” she said less than eagerly. She loved presents and this one apparently didn’t look like too much fun.

“It’s a message machine for your telephone!” I said excitedly. I was way too enthusiastic as a young person. I see it now in young people, enthusiasm to mask inexperience.

“What does that mean?” She frowned as she looked at it.

“When you’re not home, this will record messages from people who call you and you can listen to them when you get home!” I exclaimed.

“Why would I want to do that?” she looked perplexed. “All these years I’ve been fine without something like this, why would I want it now?”

“It’s the new thing Nana; everyone has one and you have to keep up!” I cautioned her.

“Well, I don’t know about this, Annie, how does it work?” She was annoyed probably because this was not the present she wanted.

“The phone rings when you’re not home and the message machine picks it up and the caller hears your voice and they leave a message!” I explained, “and then you listen to that message when you get home!”

“It picks it up? What do you mean, it picks it up?” she asked incredulously. “How can this thing pick up a phone?”

I caught her eye and could clearly see she was trying to figure out how the machine would reach out and pick up a telephone receiver. I adored my grandmother and she may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer.

While I was standing in line to return the message machine, I made a commitment that when I was “old”, I would keep up with the times. So, here I am, 30 years later facing Blogging, Tweeting, Facebook, Instagram, ad nauseam. Most of it seems narcissist and unnecessary and surely that’s how Nana felt about message machines. So, to honor my commitment, I’ve started this blog and I just got on the dreaded Facebook today.

So, like me or follow me or whatever you’re supposed to do on these things. God, it’s so annoying!!
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