I, Dinosaur

      I've blogged before about my struggles with new technology.  I thought I had plenty of company.  But something happened this past week that made me feel like a time traveler set down in the future, perhaps like some dinosaur in one of the Jurassic Park movie series.

     I've never owned a cell phone.  My wife has one and we both struggle at times to operate it competently.  Most times we can't even answer it when it rings.  Touch here, swipe there . . . and it keeps ringing.  So I have little use for it.

     Out local government ordered residents to replace their water meter with something called a "smart meter."  We had to either call a 1-800 number or go onto the contractor's website to schedule the switch.  The letter we got said going on the website would be quicker so that's what we did.

    I entered all the information including our landline telephone number. and e-mail address.   There was a space for cell phone number which I left blank.  With our cell phone issues, I wasn't going to give them that number. The website didn't like that.  It kept asking for the cell phone number.  There was no option for saying we didn't have any.  Not everyone has cell phones, right?

    Finally, out of frustration, I entered the landline twice.  That seemingly worked and we were told our appointment was made.  But we got no confirmation, by phone or e-mail.  When I called to confirm, I was bounced around from one person to another without success.  At our insistence, somebody did call back to confirm.  They said we had turned off text messaging for our phone.  I thought maybe they could have figured out they were texting a land line.  Maybe they should have consulted their "smart meter."

     Anyway, then my son who came from St. Louis with his family wanted to go to a high school football game here.  But the only way we could get tickets was with our cell phone, so said the school's website.  That couldn't be right, I told my son.  You can always buy tickets with cash.  It's just a high school football game.  We went anyway.

     I figured when we got to the game, they would have a separate line for cash.  But I was dumbfounded to see that wasn't the case.  There were big signs with QR codes and workers at a table scanning phones.  I saw nobody handling cash.  By the way, neither my wife nor I have had any luck scanning in QR codes.  But nobody in the large crowd of folks pulling out their phones and heading into the stadium had such issues.  Was I the only one wanting to pay cash to get into the local high school football game I've attended for 30 plus years?  Apparently.

    That's when I felt as if I were dropped into an episode of The Jetsons.  I felt like a dinosaur.  My son, much more technically savvy that I am, had no trouble getting us in with a cell phone.  

    Anyway I was reminded of the summer road trip I took with our other son.  As we were driving, my nine-year-old grandson Luke chided me for bringing paper road maps.  "People are going to laugh at us," he said.   This time old school technology came in handy when we ended up in a "dead spot" where cell phone usage was non-existent and so was the wayfinding app my son was trying to use.

     I guess I'd call that dead spot a dinosaur preserve.