On Our Way To Crazy

You know those old people who still have rotary phones and black and white televisions in big wooden frames, who, when you try to get them to talk to someone on a cell phone, look at it like it might eat their head and holler into it because there is no way the person on the other end can hear them through that tiny little thing?

I think I am on my way to being one of those people. The 2060 version.

Aaron went to some kind of technology conference yesterday and came home buzzing about all the new things they saw. Phones that open one way to be a phone and a different way to be a PDA. Boxes that connect your TiVo with your XM radio with your phone with your sprinkler system so you can access them from anywhere. Phones smaller than Zoolander’s. Microchips you just embed into your wrist that keep lists of your favorite songs, movies and tv shows and feed that information to advertisers so that billboards and magazine ads change as you walk past them. (OK, maybe not that last one… yet.)

And I guess that stuff sounds cool. I just don’t need it. We’re already a pretty low-tech household as it is: we don’t have cable, internet (or a computer, really), camera phones, TiVo, wireless, big- or flat-screen tvs or anything interesting. We have old cellphones. We have rabbit ears. We use VHS tapes to watch grainy Gilmore Girls episodes. And I’m okay with that, even though I know Aaron isn’t. He’s a gadget guy. And someday, hopefully, we’ll be able to upgrade our house a bit.

But if we don’t, I’m alright. And because of that, I’m afraid that I’ll slowly morph from She Who Does Not Need Technology to She Who Shuns All Things New And Hobbles Around Complaining About Kids These Days And Big Brother While Squinting And Adjusting The Foil On Her TV Antennas.

And no one wants to be That Person.