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By Jack Godbey

Columnist

Using modern technology can be challenging to some folks like me. I used to be quite the expert in Windows 95, However, it seems technology kept moving forward and I didn’t. In fact, I bought a new phone recently and the salesman was telling me that the phone was the best thing since sliced bread.  Honestly, all I cared about is that the thing can make a phone call, send texts, and allow me to take pictures of any interesting things. Like the time I got a potato chip that looked like Mike Tyson’s head. You have to document those things. When the salesman told me that the phone cost fifteen hundred dollars, I almost passed out right there in the store. I assure you that I will never, let me repeat, never pay that amount of money for a phone. Unless that phone can rub my belly and make me a sandwich, I will not be purchasing it.

 When I got home and attempted to activate the much cheaper phone that I purchased, I realized that I may not know what I was doing. I fiddled with the phone trying to get it to work and just before I gave up and threw the phone in the garbage, I took it back to the store and the pimply face teenager behind the counter activated it in about thirty seconds. As he walked away, he just rolled his eyes and muttered, “Boomer”. Excuse me, I’m not a Boomer, I’m Gen X and proud of it. Yeah, he may know how to download a video in seconds flat or how to play video games with folks across the ocean, but my generation has a whole set of different skills that these youngins have no idea about.

 For example, they have no idea how to use a fax machine. These things were great back in the 90’s. Once we all got tired of faxing pictures of our butt to our co-workers, they could be quite useful. In today’s time, everyone thinks they know everything because Google told them something was true. We all know everything on the internet is true right. Well, have you ever heard of an encyclopedia? All you get is the information and don’t have to sort through various cat videos to find it. 

Kids today just snap a picture of anything under the sun all willy nilly. They have no idea how to put film in a camera and then jump on your bike and take it down to the drug store to have it developed. You would have to wait 8 to 10 days before you realized that your thumb was in front of the lens.

A young co-worker asked me if I knew the phone number to the local fast-food place. I laughed and said, “You can’t look that up on your precious Google”? Well, back in the day, we had a thing called a phone book that not only had everybody’s phone number but also their address. Today, people go to great lengths to try and hide that information like its top-secret information. Back then, we put it out for all the world to see.