Digital Immigrant Confronts Digital Decade

Twenty ten. Don't say two thousand and ten because that would take too long. Our kids are digital natives; we are the immigrants. They can text with their thumbs faster than I can pick my nose with my pinky. We are the greenhorns, trying to speak the new digital babble. Some days I feel so out of it, I can practically feel a babushka on my head. Except this time the new country came to me, instead of me having to cross an ocean. In my country I spell "anytime" the old way. The text spelling is "netym." Big improvement, huh? But I am learning. I know what OMG and LOL mean. Some acronyms still stump me. Is BFF Best Friend Forever or Big Fat Face? 

One of the biggest catalog items this year was the voice-activated coffee-maker. I like the idea, since buttons and digital settings are beyond my grasp. (I wonder if ones made in different countries respond to different languages...) Yet with all the amazing gadgets that were designed in the "digital decade," they still have not perfected a voice-activated television remote. We recently got the Sony Bravia 52-inch TV and let me tell you, Simon Baker (The Mentalist) is even more adorable in that size. (I hear from people who have seen him on location that this may be life-size for him.) The problem is that we now have the digital box, the DVD, etc. We also live in an "over 50" community that includes Turner Classic Movies in its basic cable. (Many residents don't remember anything that happened after 1949.) I have always been an old movie buff. But once we got the fancy schmancy TV, I couldn't figure out how to find TCM on it.

Today, on his last day of vacation, my techie husband Erik made up his mind that he would teach me how to find TCM on the big screen. It's just a matter of handling the remotes, he said. He called me into the living room, sat me down in front of the TV and handed me this chart. 

I tried to follow the directions. Honest, I did. I got video showing Bing Crosby dancing next to Fred Astaire, but the audio had them on the 20 yard line, third down with seconds to go in the third quarter. There I was with my babushka again. I felt nostalgic for rabbit ears with tin foil on them.

 Fortunately, I still have a voice-activated husband. "Fix it," I said. And he did. He got Fred Astaire off the goal line in time for Bing Crosby to sing "Blue Skies." Speaking of rabbit ears, did you ever see the loppers on Crosby? Give me Simon Baker's twinkly eyes netym.