How Technology Has Changed the World for Seniors

My husband and I often discuss the subject of technology and how it has changed the world. Many people our age are still suspicious of most things technological, but my husband fell in love with computers at the get-go. His first computer was a Texas Instrument model that used a small TV as a monitor and saved on a cassette tape any files he expected to need again. Things have come a long way since then. Computers are such an integral part of life these days that it seems hard to imagine life without them.

To me, search engines such as Google are nothing short of a miracle. For example, this morning we parked across the street from church on one of our church parking lots, facing the street and just a few feet from the low curb. Often people choose to just drive off the curb in leaving, since the street has enough coats of blacktop on it to make it only a couple of inches below the curb. When we were leaving, I expected my husband to drive off the curb as the others were doing, but he said he'd rather not.

I said, "Well, do whatever you want to do, but don't back into a tree." He threw the Camry in reverse, moved back a few feet and BLAM!!

"Like that?" he said. He had indeed backed into one of a couple of trees left on the recently acquired lot when the houses were removed from it.

It's not the first time he has backed into things. And, while I'm not counting, my hit record is almost as good as his. When you reach a certain age, not only does your vision slip a bit, but the neck doesn't swivel as well either.

Of course we were sick about damaging our little Camry. It's an '03 model with over 120,000 miles on it, but it's still our baby. In its eight years with us, this was its first injury.

Thankful we had hit a tree and not another vehicle, we tried to get off the lot, via the curb, as quickly as possible and get out of sight before anyone gave indication of having seen what happened. We drove straight home and into the garage, and got out to inspect the damage. There was a dent in the lower part of the right end of the bumper. There was also a lot of tree bark residue all around the dent.

While hubby went in to change into old clothes, I grabbed a sponge with scratchy on the back and a bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap and went to work. By the time he came out, there was little damage to see except for the dent which was maybe four or five inches across.

He started gathering up tools and I rushed to the computer to check online for help in removing dents. I was amazed to see that one could use a hair dryer to warm up the dented area, then spray the area with canned carbon dioxide (liquid dry ice) and the dent would pop right out.

I passed the news on to my husband, who retrieved a hair dryer and then started calling what few businesses are open on Sundays in our small town. Of course none of them had the liquid carbon dioxide.

So he warmed up the area with the dryer and tried pushing the dent out from the back by hand. Imagine our joy when it just sort of ootched back out where it was supposed to be.

Afterwards we were discussing how amazing it is to be able to go online and learn virtually anything you want to know. I had recently been trying to get educated about female cats, since one has taken up residence at our house and we've always had toms before. She's still a bit too wild to take to the vet for reclassification surgery, and I was wondering if there was any reasonable alternative. So I went online to see what I could learn about feline reproduction. Needless to say, I was shocked to see in graphic detail more than I had asked for.

My husband mentioned that before his Sunday School class had started this morning, one of the men had asked a former serviceman in the class if he knew where a certain ship, the USS Sullivan, was docked. My husband whipped out his iphone and in a couple of minutes told them exactly where the ship is now located. Since most of his classmates (all old codgers like him) are not technologically inclined, they were amazed at the speed with which he located the information. Then later they were surprised to learn that he also had the entire Bible in the iphone.

The hesitance of some older people to get too involved with technology didn't start with computers. The first calculator my husband owned cost well over $100, but he was so fascinated with the concept that he was glad to pay for it. Now a very usable calculator can be bought for $1.

As calculators became more easily available, most people bought one, but the way they were used spoke volumes for the older generation's distrust of such electronic gadgetry. I often heard it said that kids would work addition problems the old way and then check them with a calculator, while adults would work them with a calculator and then check them the old way. There may have been a reason for that, because back then if a calculator's battery was low, it tended not to work right.

One day my older brother had a carpentry project in mind and came to me for help in figuring out how much lumber he needed to buy. I had learned to figure such problems out in such a way as to have virtually no wood wasted. I soon realized that the numbers I was reading on the calculator didn't seem right, so rechecked them in my head. When we changed the battery in the calculator, its math skills improved instantly. But it was a long time before I trusted a calculator again. I think calculators have been improved by now so that one either works or it doesn't. No answer at all is better than the wrong one.

Where computers are concerned, it's taking me a while to get used to having all the valuable information right at my fingertips. I remember going to the library to research anything I couldn't find in our old World Books---or calling up people I considered more knowledgeable than myself---when I needed to know how to fix, clean, make, or bake anything.

I have enough cookbooks (over 50 years' worth) to start my own library. Yet now if I need a certain recipe, I'm more likely to go online to find it. Take, for example, yesterday when we were driving around and I got a terrible craving for a Butterfinger candy bar. Because I'm (supposed to be) on a diet, I didn't want to ask my husband to buy one for me when we stopped at the grocery store to buy another item. Yet the craving was so strong I decided maybe there was something in a Butterfinger that my system was needing. (:>))

So when we got home, I Googled in "Butterfinger" and found not only a recipe for Butterfingers but Mounds and Almond Joy as well. While my husband worked on taxes, I hooked up and made my own Butterfingers. And they're not half bad. Of course I had to send most of the candy to the upstairs frig to get it out of my easy reach, but it's a good feeling to know I can find a recipe for almost anything and some of them actually work.

Most of the time I long for the good old days. We often discuss that we have been blessed to live in the very best of times in history, and those days are gone. It bothers me that people, especially the younger generation, seem to have forgotten how to talk and even how to spell, but can text at a thousand words a minute.

But sometimes I think there's something to be said for today's technology. One night recently I sat in my brother's darkened hospital room and sent text messages to my husband elsewhere in the hospital. I've even thought of getting rid of all my cookbooks to make room for something else. But on second thought, if our computer crashes, or the power goes off, it's still nice to have some information that doesn't depend on something as fickle as electricity and electronic gadgetry.