Technology… huh?

Six words I’ve heard a lot these past several days are “No Grandpa, let me show you.” And here I thought that as Baby Boomers we knew more than a four-year-old.

Unspecting Baby Boomers

Julie and I are watching our ‘almost two’ and ‘almost five’-year-old grandkids while their parents take a well-earned vacation. Amongst the walks, playgrounds and library visits, “The Sound of Music” is available “on the blue ray player”. (I never had a blue ray player) Naive me was thinking that a ‘blue ray’ was like a VCR… no problem I told myself.

What the heck is a PS4?

It turns out that the ‘blue ray’ is actually a PS4 machine – a play station four. Whoever invented this darn contraption must have intended it as a torture device for Baby Boomers. First off, there are only two buttons on the box itself. I stared at it in disbelief until one of the grandkids uttered a version of that annoying phrase… “I got it, Grandpa” and magically, the box came to life. Now, how to start it playing the movie…

As I sat there staring at the PS-box, muttering to myself and pushing the non-power button I hear another version of – “That’s not what you do. Here, Grandpa, let me show you…”. With that, the almost-five-year-old picks up something that looks like a cross between a palm sander and a flight control for a spaceship and tells me to “just use the menu’. Like the box, this thing has no labels, just a bunch of ridiculous symbols. Some of the buttons have no labels at all. Another Baby Boomer torture device.

How does she do that?

In seconds, this ‘almost five-year-old’ flew through menus and has skipped ahead to the part that she wanted to watch. When I asked her how she knew to press ‘those buttons’, she gives me a confused look and says, “That’s just what you do, Grandpa.” Defensively, I tell her that I understand technology, but I’ve never used a PS-thing before. In what I swear sounded like a patronizing tone she tells me, “I know. It’s okay, Grandpa”. “No,” I say with a more defensive tone, “I worked with computers for over thirty years… I even wrote database interfaces in C…”. She patted me on the knee and asked if we could just watch the movie now.

I really do understand technology… really. I retired because I could, not because I got too old for the technology. Really.

Washington, DC Snow

We headed south to escape the cold and snow of Western NY. For our troubles we landed in the middle of the worst snow storm of the season in Washington, DC.

Our futile attempt to escape the snow of Western NY
DC Snow

Now, I have to say that this ‘worst storm of the winter‘ was nothing by Western NY standards, but it virtually closed down the District of Columbia. It seems that they have few plows here; the schools were all closed and the Federal government was shut down. Traffic on the roads was pretty light, so getting from our hotel to Monica’s home was relatively easy and having a snow day with the Grandkids was great.

On the other hand, snow on the first day of spring was not in my imagined version of our first week of retirement. It’s disturbing that my fantasy world of retirement is already crumbling on day-four. I’m hoping that clear skies are ahead!