The plague of auto-correction

One should always take pause prior to hitting the send button on one's mobile phone.  At the weekend, a friend was due to visit with her family and we thought it would be a great idea to go for a walk and have a pub lunch.

Given the wealth of rain we've had recently, the prudent advice was to bring appropriate footwear for the occasion, so I sent a text to that effect, or at least, that was my intention.  Instead of the abbreviation for Wellington boots, my text read. "Don't forget your willies".

Before I could repair my gaff, she responded with "I don't have a willie".  In fairness to her however, she did arrive with her husband and two sons.

A GOM in the making

I used to think it odd that my mother could never quite fathom the art of setting a VCR to record the showings of Coronation Street that she would miss when she popped out for her car maintenance evening classes.

I found it somewhat of a paradox that she was planning to learn the rudimentary steps of auto care (which seemed highly complex to me) when she couldn't set the video to record a few Corrie episodes. This was especially unfathomable when I considered that nothing could be simpler than programming an entire week's worth of entertainment from the comfort of an armchair at the touch of a few remote control buttons.

Technology it seemed to me, was wasted on the aged.  Not that my mother was particularly old, at 46, she would rightly argue that she still had a good few years ahead of her, but to me, she seemed a little dated.  I resolved therefore, never to lose touch with technology, that I would maintain a steadfast focus on ensuring a detailed understanding of which buttons to push.

Fast forward 30 years and I have discovered that to a greater or lesser degree, technology has dispensed with buttons and I have dispensed with an understanding of how to operate it.  I have become, as it were, my mother, albeit without the ability to change the air filter in a car.

It's not that I don't like technology; I love gadgets.  We have loads in our house, none of which I have the foggiest idea how to use.  I invested in my first ever iPhone last year and discovered that I'm highly proficient at controlling the volume; which requires the use of a button, but utterly unable to negotiate Facebook without the help of my 14-year-old son, who demonstrates its use so rapidly that I remain blissfully ignorant of how to read beyond the first four people who wished me a happy birthday recently.  I believe I had another dozen or so well wishers who passed comment on my progress through middle age, but I could equally have received notification from Nigerian benefactors of the millions that are due to me should I ever find a way to locate their post and provide them with my bank details.

All of which leads me to the purpose of this diatribe; I am getting on.  According to the authors of Psalm 90, we have a whole three score years and ten to enjoy.  On that basis, middle age would run from a little over 23 to just under 47, so I'm only a few years off old age.  

In celebration of that fact, I have decided that I am going to start posting my observations of the changes that the years inflict upon us.  A fundamental inability to operate an iPhone, which as Apple is so fond of telling us, is completely intuitive, is but a start of the decline.  There are many more instances that I increasingly see, hear and feel, or more to the point, don't see, can't hear and painfully feel.  

I am going to embrace these changes and moan like hell about them.  After all, according to the Psalmists, I am but three years from leaving the mid-part of my life and I will be entering my dotage before I know it.  If that's not something to harrumph about, I don't know what is.  I shall begin my development as a Grumpy Old Man.  Let the training begin...