THE SONIC BOOMER
Having a problem with your computer? Call in a 13-year-old to take a look at it.
That’s the old joke, but it’s true!
How those kids know what’s wrong with it is beyond me. It’s like when the Beatles were introduced on The Ed Sullivan Show. Our parents were in the room, snickering at the moptop haircuts, but every kid in America knew the Beatles were the next big thing.
Now it’s smartphones.
I noodle around with mine — reading my e-mail, playing games, getting directions to new and exciting restaurants and occasionally taking a phone call — but there are apps out there that could help me do so much more. Some of them have already been installed by my helpful and knowledgeable son-in-law, Greg.
“I’m only installing the apps I personally have found the most useful,” he said, as he clicked away at it when it was new. “You’ll want to customize it to your own needs, of course.”
Of course. Like I’m ever going to install an “app.” As if I could. I have the same fear many in my advanced age bracket have — that I am going to incur monthly charges accidentally. I’ve done it. On my computer, I am paying for Big Fish Games every single month. I hit a wrong button sometime a long time ago, and now I pay a fine of $4.99 a month for that mistake. I don’t know what Big Fish Games is or why they are taking my money, but somehow they know my credit card number and they just help themselves. Imagine if I started downloading apps!
“But many of those apps are free,” my son-in-law explained.
Yeah, sure. Which ones? And which ones are just trial offers?
“It’s because your generation is so suspicious,” chimes in my daughter.
“I wonder why!” I retort. “Nixon was a crook, the Vietnam War was a mistake and people are having their phones tapped to this day, so…”
She and Greg roll their eyes. They don’t even care that their apps are recording their every move, that Siri knows where they are and where they’re going, and that all the information they share with “friends” is being shared with plenty of corporations they wouldn’t be friends with if they had the choice.
Well, I shouldn’t say that. They do have a choice. But every time they scroll down through pages of legal blah-blah-blah and then press “accept,” they’ve given away a little bit more of their personal security.
And now, because of this phone, so have I.
They bought me the phone so I could send photos of my grandson to my daughter throughout the day while she was at work, missing her baby. It seemed innocent enough.
But I also have icons for who-knows-what. Thanks to Facebook, friends of friends of friends can see what I’m up to. And the other day, when I wanted to find Hoffman’s Chocolate Shop, Siri told me, “If I had enough coffee and chocolate, I could rule the world, Deb.”
Is that you, HAL? (Reference: 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
Yesterday, I was showing my train-mad grandson a video I had taken for him of a choo-choo train. Instead, he grabbed the phone, took a selfie and posted it to my antique store’s web site. Don’t ask me how he did it, I don’t know. All I know is that if you try to reach Elsie Bell’s Antique Mall through that particular app, you no longer see a picture of my storefront. You see the eyebrow and forehead of a child who is not yet two years old.
Not yet two!
At least the Beatles were harmless.
