Waiting for a second childhood
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
I can hardly wait until I get to my second childhood. At my age, that shouldn’t be too long. But I need to be there right now. I just got a brand new Mac computer with all the bells and whistles that come with instructions written in language only a child can understand. Maybe that is why the whole tool bar on new the computer is in pictures, rather than English words.
The e-mail software symbol is a postage stamp. The Internet symbol is a compass. The symbol for the control panel looks like giant gears. The dang thing even has a dashboard, or at least that’s what the instruction manual calls it. When I accidentally clicked on it, up popped reminders that I am from a lost generation — a calendar with the day’s date enlarged and boldfaced. There was also a clock giving me the time of day in a sort of a “its later than you think” attitude, and even an up-to-the-minute weather report. I can still remember when we used to think for ourselves.
About the only icon that really told it like it is, is the trashcan. It is the same as the wire trashcan of my office days. I can well understand why those Apple people used a compass to get to the Internet because someone my age needs a compass to navigate that wilderness.
My old i-Mac was going blind when its monitor grew dimmer each day. I was told that it was so old, the Mac people couldn’t get a Seeing Eye dog for it. It sits alongside my desk looking fat and sassy in comparison to this sleek flat screen monitor that now occupies one third of the desk space.
There is even a time machine that is on my screen. Maybe I can jump into it and it will beam me backwards to my childhood so I too can understand this electronic sea of mystery. Of course if it sent me back in time, I would be changing the ribbon on my precious Underwood number 5 typewriter. I can still operate that wonderful machine without depending on an instruction manual. The instruction manual that came with this new computer is of little help because someone who flunked English as a second language wrote it.
Oh well, they tell me it is the same machine I have operated for several years. It sure isn’t the user friendly Apple II, that is in my upstairs closet. Nor is it the little Mac Classic I wore out that is also upstairs in a closet. It is not anywhere near the wonderful Macintosh Performa, my all time favorite that was stolen in a home burglary and caused me to replace it with the i-Mac that now sits on the floor, probably giggling over my frustration with new technology. If it is any comfort to the old i-Mac, I wish I could get a seeing-eye dog for it, but this younger generation of computer geniuses wants to upgrade everything so they can Lord it over us old folks.
I still have several manual typewriters and the other day, a Hospice patient at the VA medical center in Roseburg requested a manual typewriter to write his poetry. I dug a portable Remington that I had taken with me on traveling newspaper assignment. This particular one had gone with me on the last voyage of the Queen Mary, from Southampton, England all the way around Cape Horn to Long Beach, Calif. I oiled it, but the platen was frozen and I couldn’t get it to roll in a sheet of paper.
Get with it grandpa, this is the 21st century when things are created to be obsolete. That is why I have a storeroom filled with old Macs and those antique typewriters.
Editorial Note: The Capital Press in Salem, one of the newspapers where my column appears tried an experiment of using my weekly column on is website only, www.capitalpress.com. The day my column didn’t appear in print, I got phone calls from California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington asking why I had stopped writing my column. I directed them to the website. Apparently, the newspaper got more calls and I received this e-mail message from the editors:
Well, sir, with egg on our collective face, Capital Press hereby repents from messing with a Marine. Ever since your column was moved from weekly printing to weekly webbing, our newsroom phone has been ringing off its collective hook with a common refrain: "Where is Bill Duncan’s column?"
We yield to our readers, who know what they like.
Ergo and forthwith (and immediately) you have been promoted to a section front — Page 13 — and will hold that position every week in perpetuity.
Since Will Koenig and I share responsibilities for that page, please e-mail your column to both of us (beginning today … I can’t find your submission for this week). Our e-addresses:
< addresses-removed >
Semper Fi –
Steve Brown
U.S. Army vet who also knows what he likesMy comment: the moral to this, other than don’t mess with a Marine. Readers know a good thing when they read it. I was happy for the results because half the time I couldn’t get the Capital Press website. Anyway, I sort of like the feel and smell of newsprint and printer’s ink. It is in my blood.
Bill Duncan