Advice from a small town girl

Just a few minutes ago, I was more than halfway through a column about my birthday. I paused to read it through, just to make sure it made sense, when I realized I was WHINING.

Ouch.

I decided I don’t need to do that anymore.

Instead, let’s talk about technology.

I have some fairly strong Luddite leanings, but am basically too lazy to actually act on them. It’s one thing to despise technology, and quite another to live without it.

So I have a smart phone.

One of the reasons I wanted a smart phone is because my smart car is supposed to be able to stand in for my smart phone when I’m driving. I should just be able to press a button on the steering wheel and say, "phone home" and it will do it for me.

Never mind the fact that I probably shouldn’t even be talking to myself while I’m driving. I have attention issues.

At any rate, I’ve had the smart phone for several months and still haven’t been able to figure out how to link it to the smart car.

All in all, probably a good thing.

Of course, that’s not all my smart phone can do. It could probably do everything but the dishes (which would actually be useful), if only I were not so much less smart.

It took several days and a lot of missed calls before I realized that the little green arrows that show up on the screen when the phone is ringing indicate which direction to swipe your finger when you want to say hello.

It took mere seconds to figure out how to download several games with which I can waste a great deal of time.

I can look things up on the internet from my phone, and check email for both myself and my business.

I can take pretty good pictures with my phone. Well, what I mean is the phone produces a decent picture. I don’t.

I can text a little faster now that I have a “qwerty” keyboard instead of just a phone pad. It used to take me half an hour to compose a text. Of course, that was mostly because I refuse to use all those texty shortcuts, such as “u” for “you” or “r” for “are.” I just can’t make myself do that. So I run out of space.

I can record little voice reminders to myself, or type them into a memo. Of course, I never remember to retrieve the reminders, but it’s nice to know I can.

I could download songs, post information about myself on several sites, check out my ancestry, edit photos and much, much more.

But I don’t.

I try to answer it when it rings, and if I’ve left it home or in my coat pocket somewhere, I try to return calls when I can.

Just not in the car.