Readin', 'Ritin', 'Rithmatic and, Oh Yeah, Droid!

The skills that were taught and learned in schools just two generations ago were oh, so much more basic. You learned your ABCs, how to write in cursive and how to put two and two together. Then sometime in the 1970s the curriculum started to change. Hooked on Phonics replaced Dick and Jane. Now that lessons in cursive have been dumped in favor of keyboarding instructions, perhaps we’ll see more Xs in place of the handwritten signature! As for basic math, if you’ve ever waited for a cashier to figure out your change when the register doesn’t do it for her, you have to wonder how many checkbooks go unbalanced or worse yet, overdrawn.

Now I’m the first to admit that I’m a perfectionist bordering on obsessive compulsiveness about good old fashioned grammar, including punctuation and spelling. Text messaging makes me twitch. Instant messages that lack capital letters are bad enough and getting an email typed in all capitals makes me want to scream out loud. I try to be forgiving when I see Facebook posts and tweets that don’t meet my standards, but it’s a little harder to extend full grace to business emails that are peppered with misspellings.

Enter the Droid. Earlier this week I posted on Facebook that I was nervous about upgrading from a simple clamshell-style cell phone to a smartphone when I bought the just-released Motorola Bionic. Now that I’ve tried texting for the first time I realize just how hard it is to be letter-perfect. I spend more time backspacing than keystroking! So to all of my social media contacts, I hereby offer a public apology for the less than generous thoughts I’ve had about your written language skills!

The smartphone is a necessary evil in order to successfully work virtually from Jacksonville. I need the mobile hotspot to connect my laptop to the Internet and thus to my company. I need to be more accessible (yeah, more than my normal 10 hours a day) to prove to company management that working remotely will indeed work. And so it goes.

Since Bill and I both acquired these new toys, er, tools, this past week, we’ve made five trips back to the Verizon Wireless store and have called customer support at least that many times. We may not be techno-savvy nor are we helpless idiots, but in this burgeoning love-hate relationship with Droid, we are definitely not feelin’ the love!

The young (very young) woman in the Verizon Wireless store was patient and kind as she helped us transition email accounts and learn more than the so-called online user’s guide offered. If we lived closer to our 2-year-old grandson, I’m sure he would have this figured out in five minutes! Our son-in-law Steven recently posted that as Susan left for work one morning our 5-year-old grandson Brogan said, “Goodbye, Mommy!” while Griffin yelled, “Bye, iPad!” Huh!

I’ll get the hang of it soon, so bear with me when your phone calls go to voice mail while I figure out how to unlock the phone! Droid!