Scary Things

      A long-time Halloween tradition came to an end this year when we took our four-year-old grandson Owen to participate in the local pre-school pumpkin hunt, something we've been doing with one or more grandkids for the past eight years. This is the last year he can participate and he's the youngest. among three brothers.

     Since he was with us all day, I had a chance to chat with him about his upcoming trip to Disneyworld. I told him about the spooky haunted mansion they have there which is my favorite. “I'm not scared of a haunted mansion,” Owen said. “But I am scared of a haunted house.”

     OK, I'm not sure what the difference is but I left it there. Speaking of scary, I did my usual scary yard decorations and added something new. When my father passed away last month, we debated on an appropriate epitaph for his interment plaque. My brother slightly in jest suggested one of my dad's favorite goodbyes, particularly to his grandkids: “Don't call me. I'll call you."

Of course, we didn't use it for my dad's memorial but I thought it might work for a tombstone in the haunted graveyard that lies in front of my house. So here it is.

     Witches, zombies, vampires and the like no longer scare me at my advanced age. But what petrifies me more than any possible encounter with the paranormal is new technology. Wife Wendy and I have been dealing with a lot of it lately too this Halloween season.

     Our bank merged with another and instead of our new bank sending us a new ATM card, they sent us debit cards instead. For someone who's never used a debit card and having heard horror stories of people who have had issues with them, I said “No thanks.” Well, first I had to wait an hour on a phone to speak to a customer service representative but we got it done. Or I should say I got mine done because they didn't send one for my wife. It's frightening what you have to go through to get things done in this high tech world, especially if you have to speak to a real person.

     Then our cell phone service said we needed to replace our phone. Why? The old one works fine. Nope, not good enough apparently. So we bought a new phone and Wendy spent the better part of a day getting it to work. But now it has all these scary aps on it.

     OK, well it did. I just picked up the phone, which is actually Wendy's phone since I don't have one, and most of the aps disappeared while I was browsing through it, including the only one we really use, our Tim Horton's app. Wendy's going to kill me. New technology is about to claim a victim.

     Here's a new idea for my scary front yard. Instead of the graves of people, I'll litter about remnants of old technology—out-of-date computers, phones, TVs (might as well bury obsolete TVs in my yard since they can't go into the trash and there's no easy way to get rid of them). Then instead of dummies of demons and ghosts, I could instead set up a horde of robo-callers, hackers, spammers and pop-up ads.

     Maybe now that we've nearly put the phone and debit card issues to rest, we can breathe a sigh of relief that new technology will leave us in peace at least till next Halloween.

      Er, did I just see a notice on my computer about Windows 11?