Hope for Technologically-Challenged Seniors
I spent weeks playing phone tag with my daughter who lives 100 miles away. I had her cell phone number, home number, pager number, office number, etc…. and although I dialed each one religiously every day in a system born of desperation, all I ever accessed were some rather snotty voice mail messages telling callers that email should be the primary method of contact!!
One Sunday afternoon my frustration levels reached melt-down proportions and I persuaded my husband to drive me to her house. After the obligatory hugs and kisses, she exclaimed, “MOM!! Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?” Sensing the approaching storm, my hubby tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile as he headed for another room and I unleashed on my unsuspecting child.
“LET YOU KNOW?” I shrieked. “How can I let you know anything??? You gave me the numbers to 4 different phones that you NEVER answer!! I’ve dialed so much these last few weeks that I have a callous on my index finger and I know each of your answering machine messages by heart…wanna hear? Why on earth do you pay the bill for phones that you never answer?”
“Mom, calm down!” she said quickly, as I stopped to inhale. “All you have to do is send me an email! I gave you the address last time, remember?”
She had indeed, and I had rushed home eager to show off my newly-acquired technological expertise by attempting to compose an email to her. I carefully inserted the address, typed my message and proudly hit SEND; only to have the entire thing sent right back to me like a boomerang marked UNDELIVERABLE by someone named Maeler-Daemon. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who HE was or why he was reading an email intended for my daughter! That’s when I tried calling her on the phone to ask what I had done wrong and, well…. you know the rest!!
Turns out, after a bit of detective work, that even though I was using the right email address; I had inserted a space in between the first and second words, and, for some reason no one has been able to successfully explain to me, computers don’t like or acknowledge spaces in locations where people my age have been putting them for years. Everything else was correct, but that one error, apparently, was enough to thoroughly confuse the technological marvel known as my ISP and gum up the works.
Now that I know spaces are a no-no when sending emails (although I never did find out who that nosy Maeler-Daemon fellow was…) my daughter and I email back and forth daily with little trouble. Thank Heavens for the REPLY button!! But it does prove that old dogs CAN indeed be taught new tricks….even if our data intake valves don’t process things as fast as they once did! My next project will be to master the ADDRESSES section of my email thingamajig….that should be an adventure so stay tuned for further updates!
