28 May 2007

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

I got a taste of just how "uncool" and out-of-touch I am this past Memorial Day weekend. My high school-aged nephew has a "chocolate phone," except it looked strawberry colored to me. What do I know? I'm old. I don't even own a cell phone. My nephew spent the day taking pictures of things around our cabin with it, but sadly, he wasn't able to text message friends or anything...cell phones don't work in our backwards backwoods cabin. Any time anyone wanted to know the time, they didn't look at a watch, they pulled out their phones.

Our cabin doesn't have a phone, not even one with a cord. We don't have TV either. It's not that the cabin is without running water, plumbing or electricity. We have a big satellite dish (circa 1980s), but that broke years ago and even if it was working, it isn't set up for digital so we wouldn't get any channels anyway. We just haven't moved into this century.

I took the kids over to my husband's aunt's cabin for a boat ride on their new pontoon. It has a GPS, depth finder that alerts you when the fishes swim by, stereo, and iPOD interface. My husband's uncle had his iPOD hooked in and was playing his eclectic mix (Iron Butterfly's, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Rod Stewart's, Forever Young right after each other) through the stereo system while we got a ride around the lake. The pontoon also has a wine rack and pop-up enclosed toilet. A cooler of some food and you could live on the thing!!

Later that night, we had a campfire at our cabin. Hubby's uncle had his iPOD with him again. It had two dozen movies on it and 100 songs and still wasn't half full. The sound quality was great and so was the picture, albeit it was only a few inches big. As it was passed around the campfire, I couldn't even figure out how to get the iPOD to load a simple movie for me. Believe me, I tried.

In my "past life," I was tuned in to all that was cutting edge. In the four years I have been staying at home with my kids, it seems the only things I'm tuned into now are Sesame Street and Barney. I play with blocks and dirt. I am so this side of cool.

Please, don't tell Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak. I think there are rules about these things.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sounds familiar, Monica.

I don't have a cell phone either, let alone an iPod.

Last week I got too messages on my regular phone (which I wouldn't even need if I didn't have this computer addiction) and I discovered that I cannot make long distance calls because I don't have a cell phone or a long distance service.

Local Qwest doesn't make long distance calls any more In fact, local Qwest didn't even have the telephone number for Qwest long distance. I had to look it up with my computer. Couldn't find it in the telephone book.

I learned I could sign up for a limited service for $.99 a month, but if I make no more calls than the two I need to make, it will cost me $11.88 per year for some service that I don't really need.

I guess I have to go out and get a phone card to return calls to my two callers.

Life sure is complicated in the 21st century.