Android (operating system) Archives -

While most people have been using smartphones for ages, I finally inherited a hand-me-down iPhone 5 from my husband’s secretary. At long last, I possessed that amazing little gadget that can do everything but wipe my backside. I can get organized, share FaceTime with family (here is an explanation on how to use it on any Android machine), text message friends and dance my heart out to iTunes. Just one problem, they don’t make smart phones for dummies.

Case in point ME. When I went to phone store center to trade in my antique Nokia, the clerk laughed out loud. “Wow, it’s been eons since I have seen one of these.”

Within 48 hours of activating my phone chip, I made so many gaffs the Frenchman threatened to confiscate it.

While walking home from school, I tried calling the hubby at his printing office in Lausanne; instead I rang my daughter at her pediatric clinic in Minneapolis. That went down real well.

In PE class, I thought I was recording students’ lap times; instead I was setting the alarm clock.

“Who’s calling?” I screamed waking up that night.

“You!” the hubby grumbled. “You set your phone to ring at two a.m.!”

When it comes to technology, I am one step behind and a term or two off beat. When my students told me about that instant messaging thing, I said, “Cool! I need to get what’s up.”

They laughed me out of the classroom.

“It’s not what’s up,” a student said, ‘it’s Whatsapp` an application for free messaging.”

Application? One uses an application to seek employment, to enter university, and to do calculus. What does “application” have to do with finding out, “What’s up, bro?”

It gets worse. During a staff meeting my sweatshirt pouch burst out singing in Janet Jackson’s voice. I swore I turned off my walking-to-school music. Savvy colleagues explained that moving around with an iPhone in your pocket could turn on iTunes.

Texting is a whole other ball game. Seriously, how can anyone text and drive? It’s like diving off a cliff with your hands tied to your feet. Even at my desk with both hands on my device, I have yet to text without falling off my chair. Besides by the time I punch in the correct letters, my brain’s faulty memory bank has already forgotten the message. Even my 81-year-old, nimble-fingered mom can text faster than me.

Stranger things keep happening. Yesterday all by itself my little iPhone burst into song and dance, playing Walk the Line by Johnny Cash…. I don’t even like Johnny Cash. Next thing I know Sandra Beckwith, a marketing guru, is telling me how to sell more books – from a class I took five years ago. My husband, who was watching Netflix on TV downstairs, explained that sometimes it sets off iTunes when the computer nearby is on the same network. Well, how dumb is that?

Worse yet, every time he receives a call for another crisis at work, my phone rings too.

And if these phones are so smart, how come they get lost all the time? Mine has little electronic legs and never stays where I put it. When I misplaced it at school, I stayed up all night worrying that a techie teen would crack my code and access my top-secret contact list.

But you know me; I am always willing to give it a go. So send me your cell number and I’ll ring you the next time I’m in your neighborhood, if can catch that darn phone that keeps running away from home.

Meanwhile my brain becomes more muddled; numbers scramble, fingers freeze on the keyboard, … applications, smapplications, crapplications…will I ever understand that mumble jumble tech speak?

I am convinced my iPhone 5 is possessed, so I am upgrading as soon as they invent that smart phone for dummies.

Though my mom is a quilting bee extraordinaire, I can’t sew a stitch to save my life. Not even a button. But I do have a knack for knitting folks together. The Internet made it easier to weave the people in my past and present into a wonderful patchwork.

I didn’t blog about my birthday so people would shower me with wishes; I certainly didn’t post it twice on Facebook to get more likes. That mistake was due to my technological ineptitude. But a neat thing happened anyway, especially after I posted birthday wishes to my baby sister born the day after me. Comments from literally around the world gave me a heartwarming lift.

Growing up with 3 siblings 5 years apart, we shared not only clothes and closet space, but also friends. School classmates multiplied by 4 gave me oodles of childhood chums. Without any explanation, they understood what it was like to live for Friday Night Lights in Golden Warrior Territory. They grew up jerking burgers, selling pizzas and mowing lawns for pocket money with the taste of corn on the cob, Maid Rites and RC Cola imprinted in their minds forever. Each completed a piece of the mosaic of my roots growing up in Illinois.

Circles existed long before the advent of Google+. They were called family, school, church, community, and team. My college family, basketball buddies, summer friends – cabin dwellers sharing lake lore – form other squares.

Friendships from parts of the globe where I have spent time, as well as my Norwegian family up by the North Pole, create other patches. My international community of colleagues in Switzerland from Canada, France, England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, and Trinidad add other block.

Teams representing different ages and stages of my life add a colorful motif of mascots: Sterling Golden Warriors, ISU Redbirds, UWSP purple Pointers, Paris blue Rebels, Geneva green Hawks.

My cyber friends, the writing buddies like Lynne in California, Debbie in Central Illinois, Kathy in New York, Clara in Chicago, Helene in New Jersey, Sharon and Anne on the Midlife Boulevard bringing me laughter and inspiration through their words, add their own unique pattern.

Friends my folks age to my own former students, to the pals of now my grown children form other pieces of my multicultural, cross-generational comforter.

During February, I wallowed in misery with the duvet pulled up to my nose, lamenting my misfortune bedridden with illness, but only weeks later I was reminded how blessed I am.

Just like the piecework stitched lovingly by my mom, I wrapped up in my memory quilt of people to ward away cold, fend off sickness, and shield my soul from heartache.

I am the thread binding this colorful kaleidoscope of humanity.

And so are you. And that is a beautiful thing.

Next time you are ill or down in the dumps, crawl under the covers and have a good cry, then draw that cozy comforter up to your chinny, chin, chin and image being wrapped in a patchwork of people making up your own life quilt.