My mother is 82-years-old. Thankfully she still possesses all of her faculties and has no major health issues. She did conquer a cancerous tumor in her parotid gland a couple of years ago, but has no long-lasting effects. What a blessing.
My mother lives in a simpler time. Oh, mentally she is very much present here with us, but she has no concept of some of the things we deal with every day. She has no clue how to operate a computer. I don’t think she’s ever even touched one. She has a cordless phone, but thinks you still have to stand next to the base set to be able to talk. We’ve tried to explain that she can move freely about while she’s talking, but she’s still attached by that invisible cord. She has no idea about DVDs or CDs or Blu-Ray. The other day, she went to her bedroom and retrieved a digital camera that her sister had given her for her birthday last year. She said she wasn’t sure what kind of film to buy. I told her gently that you don’t have to buy film for a digital camera. I took out the tiny chip and showed her that all of her pictures would be stored on that, and she could just delete ones she didn’t like, and she only had to develop the ones that she wanted. She was lost. Totally. Her expression was one of bewilderment. We got a chuckle out of it, my brothers and I, but it brought a realization that she doesn’t know about many of the technologies that exist today, and she doesn’t care.
My niece has a Wii. Let me tell you, the first time we got my mom bowling on the Wii…priceless entertainment! She was flabbergasted.
A running joke in my family is about a time when we took my dear little mother out to dinner. She made a comment about having two forks. “I’ve got two forks. Have ya’ll got two forks?” I explained that one was a salad fork and the other was her dinner fork. Exaspirated, she said there was no earthly reason why she couldn’t eat all of her food with the same fork! You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl! She also thinks $8.00 is an outrageous price to pay for a meal. She’d pass out if she saw what we usually pay for dinner.
So, which life is better? Is it better to have convenient gadgets, instant access to information, cell phones and computers? Or is it better to live in a world where people still speak to each other instead of sending a text message? Or they send an actual hand-written letter rather than a quick email? Or they call and ask about you if you’re sick or are having a bad way to go.
I think she’s better off right where she is. She’s relatively stress-free. And after all this time, she’s sure earned it. I’m sure the changes that have occured in this world are causing many of the older folks to just shake their heads in amazement. But I also think that they are perfectly content to let techology pass them by, and just live as they’ve always done. Maybe they are the smart ones…
