What was the worst thing you did to your kids? I left one of mine behind on the bed once. Packed up the car and was half way down the hill when a little voice from the back piped up. ‘Aren’t we taking the baby?’ I’ve always considered it an understandable mistake. The kid was new. I had hormones rushing round my body and by today’s definition of a mother, I was a mere child working out how to manage two kids under two. Now that I’m older I wonder what it was we did wrong (besides leave the kid on the bed), to have to suffer the way we are all suffering right now. No? Not suffering? Let me offer a few examples. Google docs. Internet shopping. Trying to write a post on Facebook without using the enter tab. Using drop box. Paying to use drop box. Trying to find your covid tracer app on your phone. Trying to access anything with your Apple ID when you can’t find your current password in the book that has “Do Not Throw Out This Book!” on the front. The list goes on. And it doesn’t even begin to cover the constant updates and versions of things that are made to last precisely twenty seconds before they’re obsolete. It’s difficult enough getting old without The Greatest Invention of All Time kicking you up the rear end. Old should be using conditioner instead of shampoo because you can’t wear your glasses in the shower. It shouldn’t be going insane because the internet says you’re not connected when you can clearly see the wifi signal, still looking like a zebra’s ear, on the top dohicky of your computer. I just wanted to say that. I know The Greatest Invention of All Time is a wonderful thing and without it I’d never see my grandchildren who live across the world and I’d not be writing. But why do they have to make it so difficult? Why can’t we just have one version of something until it falls over and we all willingly grasp the upgrade because the old one was so hopeless? Why do we have to have a unique identifier to change the channel on the television? Who said I want to run the house from my phone when I still have to walk around to vaccuum the floors? My advice would be for someone to set up a Ministry of Superfluious Things and all the crap that sort-of works but doesn’t really, or all the crap that keeps getting updated, or just all the crap I don’t like, gets to go before a panel of aged experts to decide if it has a place alongside my Kindle, FB Messenger, Email, MS Word and possibly, (yet to fully master it) Excel. And if that doesn’t work I am quite happy turning it off and not turning it back on again until it’s promised to be good.
Robyn Anderson 