The arrival of my new cell phone has unleashed a
flurry of glitches that make the Obamacare website debacle look like a miracle
of innovation. It’s so complicated I can’t even find the words to describe the
trouble. It has something to do with my failure to back up my old phone to the cloud, the fact that I have too many
pictures and videos, and maybe something to do with not having enough storage
capability. Whatever it is, we are now on our third setup regime and I am
temporarily phone-less.
This is always how it is with me and new stuff. There
is always a glitch, usually multiple glitches. I am always left feeling old and
stupid by the process. Once it all gets fixed I am happy with the new thing.
But while my wife is at her happiest upon being presented with a new technological
devise, I feel nothing except apprehension, a great disturbance in my sense of well-being.
One of the first strategies we employed yesterday to
try to fix the phone was to go through all my videos and erase the ones I could
live without. As it turned out I found that I could live without almost all of
them, one in particular.
Most of the videos
were of Lucy doing something puppyish that I thought was adorable at the time,
but now that she has done the same thing a thousand times…not so much. There
were videos of Nationals Park and Camden Yards, scenic vistas of the Shenandoah
Valley, that sort of thing. Then I stumbled upon a video I took of my dad maybe
a week before he passed away. I had gone over to the nursing home one night and
was feeding him some ice cream. At the time I thought he was having a very good
day and I wanted to take a video to send to Linda to encourage her. When I pushed
“play” I was shocked at how weak and feeble he looked. Why on Earth had I
thought that he was having a “good” day? I suppose that near the end this was good. I immediately deleted the
thing and fought back a wave of tears suddenly welling up inside me. That’s not
the way I want to remember him.So, thanks Apple for forcing me to stumble upon such a depressing memory!
Stupid technology!
