Electronic Blues

Tomorrow I will go to the cell phone store. I have been told I am due for an upgrade. This includes a new phone for free. I am dreading the visit.

What? Getting something for free that is newer than what I have now? Dread? I must have a screw loose somewhere, you might think. The dread comes not from what I have coming in the way of opportunity. It is solely because I will have to learn to use the darned thing.

Last year I got a similar message, and I went in to see what was available for me in the way of new and beautiful cell phones. Before I go too much further I need you to understand that I am not brand new to this portion of the electronics explosion. I have had portable phones since the early 1990's, when they were called "bag phones," weighed eight or nine pounds, and took up the same space in your car as a passenger.

I have had flip-phones, flat phones, and fancy phones. They have been delivered to me in blue, silver, multi-colors and black. I have avoided pink. I have taught my octogenarian parents how to use cell phones. My phones have been extremely complex in their capacity, and here is where the problem lies.

Last year when I went to get "upgraded," I was very clear in explaining to the clerk at the cell phone store what I did and did not want. My phone did not need to do the following:

A. Make movies

B. Take photographs. I have a very nice camera for those two items.

C. Translate what I say into fourteen different languages, including ancient Greek and Welsh. Almost everyone who speaks those is dead.

D. Automatically test my blood sugar. If I were diabetic I might appreciate this, but I am not.

E. Provide me with detailed road maps of the continent of Antarctica, in case I should want to go penguin filming, or something similar. I hate being cold.

F. Give me access to the fishing charts of the Atlantic seaboard. If I did fish, and I have not done so since I was 12, it would be in a lake or a stocked pond. I see no reason to go 15 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in search of the perfect tuna. My grocery store has them.

G. Access my email the second it is delivered to my inbox. I do not want to get all of my forwarded jokes dumped into my cell phone, which will alert me to their individual presence with an incredibly annoying ring tone. I wish to read them at my convenience and in silence, please!

H. Allow me to watch movies. Why anyone would grab the opportunity to view "Avatar" or "Midsummer Night's Dream" or any Bruce Willis classic on a 2" by 3" screen escapes me. I am a fan of Imax, not I-miniscule!

What I do want, ever so much, and what would make me happy, is the never-wavering capacity to make a phone call, from my phone to another phone. Don't tell me the subscriber I am trying to reach is being searched for. If it's my husband (and it usually is), he is probably playing a video game on his Blackberry, and you are allowed to interrupt that activity so he will receive the call! Needless to say, this capacity is not always available.

Oh, and quit telling me my new phone is free if I have to pay for it and wait 3 to 6 months for a gift card to come in the mail. If I have to pay for it, it is not free. The gift card is because of your guilt in charging me for all those $&*#&%!! applications I will never use, and is directly in proportion to the number of pages of directions I will have to decipher before getting to the incoming and outgoing calls. And by the way, I only need the book in one language.

Those of you whom I call regularly, you now know why you will not be hearing from me for the next few weeks. If you really need to talk, call me on my home phone. It never needs charging, and is always in the last place where I hung it up. It has a cord.

I am currently sitting at a large, armoire-type piece of computer-holding, file cabinet, storage drawered, shelved furniture. It is substantial, and it is somewhat impressive. The impressive part is that I put it together myself, with instructions by IKEA.

I have discovered over the 36 years of my marriage that any piece of furniture that arrives at my home in a large, flat box will be put together by only one member of the family, usually me. The other members are only allowed in an area beyond an approximate three-mile radius. The one who is putting the furniture together (me again) is allowed a full weekend to complete the project, during which he or she is also allowed an unlimited number of the following:

1. Stitches

2. Well-placed curse words, uttered with emphasis

3. Alcoholic beverages, to be ingested only after 90% of said furniture is completed

4. Trips to the hardware store to find a screw that almost matches the one you lost

5. Trips to the drug store for pain killers and bandages

6. Trips to neighbors' homes or yards for momentary consolation

7. Trips to the doctor for item #1

8. Loudly uttered congratulatory phrases from others upon completion of the project

With that in mind, let me tell you about putting together my computer desk, which is what it said it was on the box. The one that I saw at IKEA about four years ago was very nice, went with my old house and its furnishings, and couldn't, I thought, be all that hard to create. After all, I had constructed a couple of IKEA tables, and a few chairs. This should not be all that different.

In fact, I lied about the one box. It took two boxes to hold the pieces of computer desk which was to adorn my den, and a third box to contain all of the hardware components. The first two boxes were very large, and incredibly heavy. The third was small, and heavy. My first project was getting them from my car to the second floor of my house. Since all other family members had been banished for the duration of my "build," I was on my own.

Happily I had discovered the "Thump and Twirl" method of stepping a large box from the back of my car to my front porch. From there a bit of "Shove and Slide" technique got the vast weight up the steps and into the house. Going to the second floor next meant going up a two-step landing, a nine-step slant of about 45 degrees, another landing, and five more steps to the top. This necessitated a "Flop and Drag," followed by a "Shove and Grunt," back to a "Drag and Scream," and ending in a "Slam and Jam."

Then I took a nap.

After the respite, I opened the boxes and dug out the directions. I will say that IKEA directions are relatively easy to follow, at least when compared to some furnishing items I have received with directions that have obviously been book-translated from a far-eastern dialect or two. I have been told to "place the panel marked 'B' into the slot marked with an arrow (red) and tightly move into position over the panel marked 'C', holding while firmly placing screwdriver into screw marked 'M' and making tight."

This particular set of directions was a source of laughter for many months after the project was completed, mostly because none of the pieces were marked, and following the directions invariably led to an impromptu game of "Twister." When played alone, that game can get more than a little frustrating.

Back to my computer desk. My simple instructions included references to more than 35 pieces of laminated wood, and a plethora of screws, bolts, tracks, runners, protective grips, door magnets and hardware. If that wasn't daunting enough, the larger pieces which had to be flung and twirled with ease, or held straight up while a much smaller piece was firmly attached, weighed an average of 35 pounds.

The directions, which took up about 12 pages, included installation of three rolling shelves, for the keyboard, printer, and an odd contraption that held the keyboard shelf. All had to have tracks and rollers installed, and then they had to fit into each other and the huge outer cabinet that held them all. It took somewhere near 5 tries to install the first track, as I kept getting it upside down. I finally got it when I turned the directions right side up.

I made it through a file drawer (five sides and two tracks, plus two edge protectors for the drawer tops and two pieces of antiqued bronze drawer pulls), a regular drawer (same approximate number of parts), then the interior-shelved storage section. I finished with a flourish the three-way divided CD and paper storage shelves in the top section of the interior, then looked at the two 20-inch by 6-foot doors which were to be attached on the front of the computer section.

These were substantial, to be put in place to close up and protect the contents of my computer desk. They were also to be held approximately 10 inches off the floor while the various screws and magnets were properly attached. These doors have since found a happy home in the back of my den closet, where they will stay indefinitely. My cabinet is doorless, and I bet the contents have not felt the least bit threatened.

I do feel a certain sense of pride when I sit down at the thing, slide the keyboard out, and begin to hunt and peck my way through a new online adventure. I am fairly sure that everything is installed right side up, that the correct screws or bolts are holding together the correct parts, and that this is a computer desk of substance. It will not disintegrate any time soon.

I finished with no stitches, no need for the doctor (except maybe for some anti-anxiety meds), and no trips to the hardware store. I lost no pieces, damaged nothing, and was able to put it all together on my den floor, so the finale was simply to stand it up and put it in place. It took me one day, but I must add that I stayed up awfully late that night.

Thank you, IKEA, for your directions, that are almost easy to understand. I have no problem patting myself on the back for the lack (for the most part) of curses uttered during the project completion. The only alcohol necessary was a large glass of wine, lifted by me in honor of a job well done (nobody knows about the doors!).

I will note, however, that no big flat boxes have been delivered to my house since.

Needs no title!

I love women. Not in the physical sense, though they are fun to look at. Not as a critic, looking over a wearer of the latest fashion, unless something about the fashion is really eye-catching, in a Lady Gaga-esque sort of way. None of that stuff is really important, when you get right down to it. And that's what women do after they reach a certain age: they get right down to it.

When I meet a brand-new possible friend (and that's the way I look at everyone these days), I have little use for the standard pleasantries. I am really no good at small talk, and that's the stuff our men-friends seem so good at discussing. How is the weather? Who won the big game? Can I borrow your lawn mower? How big was that fish? What was your last golf score? Men can spend a full weekend together and come home knowing nothing about each other.

Women, on the other hand, quickly learn about themselves and each other in a depth that sometimes startles me, but is always pleasing. Having said that, I will admit to the fact that the woman I met tonight I met because she was wearing a fabulous belt. All right, that is the standard "I like what you're wearing" opener, but it didn't stay there very long.

The friendship, which started at about 8:30 and lasted until approximately 9:15 (when I had to leave the event), took no time at all to delve into background - where did you grow up? - what era were you part of, and does it relate easily to mine? - Has your life been slow and stable, or has it been full of variety and change, as has mine? - How is life for you now? Are you comfortable, or is it a bit rocky?

It took no more than a minute to realize that compatibility was a given. I think that is because we eventually, and hopefully, reach a point in our lives where we are steady and confident in who we are as women, and as a result we no longer feel the need to compete. Instead, the desire to connect is far stronger, and the information and questions can go on for hours.

It was too bad that the event we shared held other responsibilities for both of us. I would like to have dug further into her history, asked the whats and whys of career choices and family, looked at tastes and dreams. I am sure our conversation could have gone on until midnight with neither of us becoming bored. Golf scores would never have come up.

Anyway, I hope she knows that she enriched my life with her presence, just for 45 minutes of information sharing. Women friends are invaluable, no matter how brief the friendship.

What to do

It is a beautiful, cool, breezy spring day outside, and here I sit, curled up in front of my computer, enjoying the view from my den window. The wise thing to do, one would think, is to get outside and take a long, leisurely stroll through the wonderful old town we call home. Everything is in bloom at once from a warm, wet April, and the colors and scents fill the air - with pollen.

There's the rub. The leisurely stroll would go more like this:

Step out the front door and gaze at the fifteen or sixteen tall, old maple and oak trees that are coating the street, the cars, and the lawns with yellow powder that makes my eyes water and itch just thinking about them. Strolling among them means my eyes will shortly be closed and it will take a pair of pliers and a full bottle of Benadryl to get them to open again.

In the next block there is a tall wooden fence covered with honeysuckle vines, full of lovely white flowers with bright yellow centers and a perfume that can close my throat in a nanosecond. Maybe it's because I used to eat the flowers as a child. I'm trying to recall why that seemed like a good idea. For that matter, there were a lot of things I thought were good to eat at an early age that for me to ingest now would need the help of something hydraulic. Ah, childhood.

At the end of that block there is a charming pink rose bush. The flowers are tiny and delicate, the bush has reached enormous proportions. I am actually not allergic to roses, but for about 10 years now a colony of yellow jackets has decided to dig their nest directly under that particular bush. Have I mentioned I am allergic to insect stings?

As I walk I hear the whirring and buzzing of a nearby lawn mower, taking a combination of grass and pollen and tossing it wildly into the air, for all to breathe. I figure at this point it will take about two weeks for my nose to stop running. Now the red rash and itching have started as well. The rest of me keeps walking, but with renewed strength, and in the opposite direction. I must get home!

Two of the more friendly neighborhood pups are out to play. Their homes are between me and my destination, and they are very happy to see me. Their greeting takes the form of an awful lot of jumping and licking and sniffing and leaning against. You guessed it. I am allergic to dogs.

If I do make it back from my journey still standing and breathing, I then take the front steps to my porch, where there is a particular strain of tiny, black, jumping spiders. They make their homes in the nooks and crannies of my old flagstone and concrete steps. There is not enough Raid in the world to get rid of those pesky bugs.

I am basically Buddhist at heart, and am very careful not to harm any other living thing, but one of them bit me once and put me in the emergency room. I am sure my karma is ruined for at least the month, but out comes the spray and away go the spiders.

I will finally enter my place of safety, my lovely glass-enclosed front porch. There I can sit in my grandmother's wicker rocking chair and gaze at all of the natural beauty my neighborhood can hold. It is truly the reason we bought the house, 35 years ago. I wasn't allergic to anything back then.

Of course I already told you (in an earlier post) about the family of squirrels that took up residence in the porch roof. Did I mention the starlings? They had nests there for at least five years in a row, and the adorable chirping of the new baby birds turned way too quickly into a grating squawk that was anything but pleasant, and way too constant. Oh, and I am allergic to anything with feathers.

Now that I really think about it, when we had two feet of snow on the ground, none of these things were a problem. If you heard me complain the tiniest bit about the freezing cold and the impassable roads and the awful heating oil bills, I take it all back.

Ah-choo! Sniff. Scratch.

Oh what the heck, it is awfully pretty out.

In search of a little light.....

There are really only two kinds of people in the world: those who turn on and leave on every available light in every room they enter, and those who cannot leave a room without switching those same lights off. Inevitably, in any given family of four, two of each characteristic will appear. This is a scientifically proven fact. It is also a scientifically proven fact that every marriage has in it at least one very nasty argument based upon the previous scientifically proven fact.

For instance, my husband came home from work today, while the sun was still up, walked in the front door and did the following:

1. Turned on the switch next to the door that controls the two wall sconce lights over the fireplace mantel. (This is next to a window - see reference to sun being up.)

2. Went to the first available table lamp, and turned it to the highest available illumination level so he could look to see if there were any messages on the answering machine. I must add here that the answering machine has a lighted number, which blinks, telling you if there are any messages. There were not. (This is next to a four-foot by six-foot window - note sun position.)

3. Approached the second table lamp, by the first window, and turned that on in case he wanted to come back and sit in his favorite chair and read. This chair is next to the fireplace. (Note previously mentioned sconces and window placement.)

4. Walked into the dining room and immediately turned on the switch controlling the chandelier over the table, where he might at some point put his laptop to complete some project or other, like the alphabetic filing of the day's "You-Tube" discoveries. This chandelier has five 60 watt bulbs. If you look past the chandelier out the dining room window, you can see that the sun is still approximately where it was 2-1/2 minutes ago when he arrived home.

5. Entered the family room and sat in his favorite location on the sofa, turning on the table lamp beside him. Opening his newspaper, he began to read, primarily by the light coming through the two large windows, side by side, directly behind the sofa.

By now I am sure you can see where this is going. I am the family member who opens the electric bill each month and writes out the check for a ridiculously large sum of money. Therefore, I am the one who regularly wanders through the house turning out lights. He might argue that he is the primary wage-earner in the household, which could, I suppose, give him the right to waste as much electricity as he likes.

I might counter that point with a suggestion that we use the money spent on creating migraine-inducing levels of brightness in our home to do something else, like take an Alaskan cruise. Besides, all of that light serves a dual purpose, creating not only a reading and/or computing atmosphere, but also one in which every speck of dust, fingerprint on a doorway, or smudge on the wall becomes spotlighted. The Alaskan cruise might have to give way to a cleaning service and a professional painter, unless I turn off the lights and leave the flaws in relative darkness.

It strikes me as a little odd that the behavior patterns have switched gender in the next generation. My daughter traces her path through the house by the level of artificial light she leaves behind, while my son has dutifully followed along, turning everything off. She swears she has to sleep in total darkness, yet leaves on the lights in the bathroom, den, and hallway she visits on her way to bed. My son turns everything off, so I can't find the bathroom at 3 in the morning.

Somewhere in all of this there has to be a middle ground, but I have yet to find it. I have also discovered that we who switch things off are also inevitably those who holler, "Could you please turn that down?" or ask, "Do you smell something funny?"

I am sure it is genetic, and just as sure that my daughter's boyfriend is an "off-switcher" and my son's girlfriend loves to have everything lit up. And so it goes...........

In Defense of Silliness

A woman I admire has been in the news a lot lately. She is 88 years old and going full steam ahead. I met her once, at a book signing, and the one thing I said to her that I actually remember is how much I loved her ability to be silly, and not care a bit what anyone else thought of it. You may have guessed by now that the woman is Betty White.

I remember Betty all the way back to her days on Mary Tyler Moore and Password with Allen Ludden, her late husband. I always thought she had a particularly bright sparkle in her eyes, and I really enjoyed her nutty sense of humor. Over the years she became a role model, and one that I was to carry into all aspects of my life.

For almost 20 years I spent much of my time in front of a college classroom, teaching things like English Composition, Speech Communications, Psychology, Sociology, Human Relations, Leadership, Group Communications, Contemporary Issues, and, believe it or not, a group of courses in the specific computer programs relating to Graphic Arts, Typography, and Design Principles. Oh, and I designed and taught courses in Advertising Principles and Ad Campaigns.

Because I have led a completely insane life, and dug into so many different areas of interest, I am actually qualified to teach every one of those classes. Most of them I designed and wrote from scratch. I had one prerequisite for each classroom I entered: It had to be fun.

Since a lot of my classes were for evening school or taught in a Fine Arts curriculum, they were about four hours long. In that time frame, there was no way I could rattle off some horribly dry lecture or slide show narration and keep anyone interested, or even awake. My motto in front of a classroom full of mostly strangers was simple - If I'm not having fun, you're not learning anything.

I describe my classes as four hour long stand-up comedy routines. I would climb on desks, give students bags of children's blocks to build with, and tell many funny stories (most of which had something to do with the topic at hand). I drew cartoons on the board to illustrate points and let the class play "warmer - colder" to figure out how operant conditioning worked. I honestly think my face is practically wrinkle-free because I used it in clown-like fashion to amuse and inform students about my feelings on either some of my topics or some of their answers!

I taught more than one speech class to stand up in a line at the front of the room and practice, and learn, the basic five positions in classical ballet. Of course the Academic Dean always walked in on exercises like that one. He would just smile, shake his head, and leave. I allowed students in my speech class to demonstrate "dance moves for when you're drunk on Saturday night," how to make origami frogs, and the art of the six-foot-hoagie (which we then ate).

For Business English, we made up a pretend product. The only guidelines were that it had to be advertised on an infomercial after 2:00 AM, and that a B-list celebrity had to be the spokesperson. Then the students had to write two letters - one ordering the product, complete with how they were going to pay the three easy payments of $19.95 and in what size, color, or including what set of attachments they wanted it - and the other letter to inform the maker that something had gone terribly wrong with their thingamajig, and how they wanted the problem resolved. Yes, there were serious writing skills involved, but they loved doing it, as the product was utterly ridiculous.

I have brought into my classroom teddy bears, Barbie dolls, and jars of peanut butter. My lectures have involved pantomime, karate and blowing things up (at least we did that outdoors).

The owner of my school has never understood why I won't wear a business suit to class. You can't blow things up wearing a business suit.

I give long, challenging essay exams, with a liberal sprinkling of Hershey's Kisses, and broad hints if a question is not understood. I encourage students to use their books, notes, to call a friend or ask a stranger in the hall if they need help. I want them to know how to look for information, and I want them to actually learn it, not memorize nonsense bits for a fill-in-the-blanks series of questions.

I am sure there are many instructors I have worked with who think of me as more than a little strange. Good! That means the method to my madness is working. I have spent a number of years working with adolescent addiction groups, abused teens, and battered wives. I have had to learn many, many methods of detecting drug use or suicidal intentions. I have personally lived through domestic violence, an addicted ex-spouse, and the murder of a close friend. In all of this I have had the good fortune to discover that people learn and understand far better when they are smiling than they do when crying.

So thank you, Betty White, for letting me know that even the most serious of topics can have a funny side. Thank you for giving me permission to be incredibly silly in front of a group who needs to learn some very distressing information. Silliness has worked its magic, over and over again, where stern lectures would fall on purposely deaf ears.

I sincerely hope that when I reach 88, I can look back at my accomplishments in the classroom and in life, and laugh like crazy!

Homage to Art Linkletter

Back when I was a young'un, I used to love to watch Art Linkletter on television. I especially liked his show "Kids Say the Darndest Things." He would line up some six-year-olds on his stage and ask them a series of questions, then sit back and let them work their magic. The replies were often priceless.

Having been a parent for over 33 years now, I have collected my own personal batch of kids' sayings, and of course I feel compelled to share a few of them with you.

One night, coming home from a meeting of some sort with my son, who was five or six at the time, we came upon a very large June bug in the middle of my front porch, belly up. He has never been much of an insect fan, but he tapped this one with his toe for a moment, then muttered, "Dead beetle." Backing away, he shook his head, stared quietly at the bug for a moment, and commented, "Must be John Lennon."

I think I realized at that point that this kid would grow up to have a wicked sense of humor, and he has.

My daughter is still coming up with quotable comments, but my favorite of hers was one afternoon, when she was about three, and I was busy changing little brother on the sofa. She appeared out of the back of the house, marched up to where I was sitting, placed her hand sternly on my knee, and intoned, "It's all right, Mom, I cleaned up the whole bathroom."

To this day I have no idea what was cleaned up. A quick check of the bathroom revealed kind of a lot of suds in a few areas, but nothing disastrous.

A later favorite of hers was a Mothers' Day card from maybe 1996, with a note telling me that she knew I was the kind of mother who would understand even if she moved a trailer with her husband and their thirteen kids into my back yard for a while. It was a lovely thought, even if she vastly overestimated my tolerance level. Happily, she has produced neither the husband nor the thirteen children. Whew!

The one thing I would caution you about when it comes to kids and their phrases is that they will forever remember and repeat anything dicey you are in the habit of saying, especially in times of stress. It took weeks for me to talk both of them out of repeating what I called that other driver after he ran a stop sign and smashed my headlight.

Some friends of mine had a difficult time with their daughter not speaking. By the time she was two she had been to every available specialist, and still had not said a word. All they heard from the professionals was that all of the equipment was in working order; she was just taking her time using it.

Then one morning her Mom had her in the back car seat, driving down one of the busiest streets in Central Philadelphia, and stuck in a traffic jam. Mom was torn between chewing out the driver who had just cut her off, and sharing some spicey verbiage with the red light ahead that refused to change. Suddenly, from the back of the car, came this little tiny voice,

"Look at all the goddam cars!"

Up until that point, I guess nothing had been important enough to mention! Those of you whose children are so far very quiet, be careful what you wish for. This kid hasn't shut up since. The last I heard she was in law school.

Of course, kids are great at one particular thing - they can win your heart in a second with a few choice phrases. A few months ago I had a chance to get together with five of my nieces and the eight children (7 girls, one boy!) they had between them. Their ages are between eight months and nine years, but the majority are toddlers. As I was saying my goodbyes for the afternoon, one of them, a two-year-old, ran across the floor and threw her arms around my knees. Looking up at me, she burst out with a heartfelt, "I love you!"

There is nothing else to say.