Can't find the "On" Button

This is from my awesome parents (who were born in the 1930’s) after they moved into their new home with all new appliances and gadgets after realizing nothing has an “on” button anymore.

· Alexa. Couldn’t find an “on” button. Apparently, you have to yell at her to get her to do anything. But don’t ask her to do anything until she stops spinning. Sounds a lot like me.

· Atomic Clock. No “on” button again. We did figure out how to set it after several weeks with no idea what time it was. Then one day out of the blue without any warning, it dropped back an hour to standard time. Wasn’t time yet, but ok. Took us a while to realize it spontaneously did that. Now we’re on standard time all year. Good to know.

· Clocks on the stove and microwave? Definitely going to wait for the grandkids to come over for help to attempt that one.

· Washer. No button that says on. Finally figured out there is a circle with a line through it as the “on” button. To me, the line through it means don’t push this button, but what do I know? Thankfully the power button said power, so I knew to hit that first. Once it’s on, then I have no idea what to do because there are so many choices. I know just enough to get by now to get my clothes clean enough. Nothing fancy. Can’t tell you how many times I had to refer to the instruction booklet for an answer to a question because I didn’t get it reading it the first time through. Who writes these booklets?

· Dryer. Same weird circle to turn it on. Recognized it from its evil twin, the washer. Too many options after that. Can’t even deal with it. Refuse to read the book at this point.

· Fridge. This one has all the bells and whistles. No simple door that you just open and close like we had. Anything that has a menu is not a good sign. The only bell I appreciate is the one that goes off when we don’t close the door all the way. Could’ve used that when we were raising 7 kids. But, it does come in handy for us now anyways because we’re not slamming the door shut as well as we used to. Right now we have ice when you put your glass under that option, but no cold water for that option. What in the world? That’ll have to wait until we can decipher the manual some day.

This is part 1 from a series of adventures for them that I’ll cover for the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned so you can hear how they figured out the TV clicker.