Part 3 with the "On" Button

Part 3 of 3 in struggles my parents haven encountered with new technology:

· Side mirrors on cars. My Dad said if you’re going to make a change to something, do it because you’re trying to make it better. Don’t just change a product for the sake of change. Case in point…side mirrors on cars. The old cars had a simple mirror you could look in to see the cars beside and behind you. Now cars make a distorted mirror, and put a disclaimer in fine print on it that says “objects may appear closer than they are.” Why do I want that? Just let me see where the cars ACTUALLY are. Doesn’t that sound much more helpful? Why stick a fun house mirror on your car door?

· Old machines at work. Dad said even back when he worked, all the machines went from having normal on/off switches to using an “O” and “I” system. Nobody knew if “O” meant on or off. Take your pick, see what happens. Turns out “O” meant on and “I” meant off. Who comes up with this, and why?

· Check engine lights on the car display. So annoying. If something is wrong with the car, there’s got to be a better way to alert the driver then having a tiny little light below all the gauges come on when I’m supposed to be looking up at the road and paying attention to that. Hello?!? Is this an urgent message or not?

· Motion Detector on SUV Hatch. Nice feature to swing your foot under it to get it to open if you’re hands are full of groceries, but took us weeks to realize it didn’t always work because we weren’t swinging our feet fast enough under it. Now we just have to make sure we don’t swing too hard and wipe our own feet out from under ourselves and wind up flat on our backs with groceries spilled all over.

· Cell Phone. Can’t find an on button. I miss the old phones where you just pick up when it rings. I know how to swipe to answer now and how to text…which is often sent to the wrong person. So embarrassing. But thankfully we have a lot of kids and grandkids to give us lessons. I hear that phones can do wonderful things nowadays, but I’m not going to even try to find out what until I get a lesson on what it does. I also have some sort of “share” issue going on with my phone so that anytime I take a picture, it shows up on my husband’s phone. Now I’m real careful what I take pictures of. He asked me why it does that and I said I think it has something to do with a cloud. He said, “Well make it rain already and get it over with.”

Words of wisdom and shared frustrations from my parents to you. We hope it helps in your struggles, because they said trying to survive the new technology does take their minds off of worse things right now!