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December 22, 2011 · 0:00

Public Service Reprise********** Gizmos and Gadgets

It’s not because there is so much yet to do for Christmas that I’m reposting this piece. Nope. The elves never arrived so I’m done with Christmas. Whatever isn’t done, well, you know.

But I thought it really important to re-post this piece from early June (since clearly only one person read it). I believe it is my CIVIC DUTY to inform you that, when you are tearing your hair out over your new gizmos and gadgets, you are NOT alone. AND THAT YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Whatever it is you want to celebrate!

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GIZMOS AND GADGETS

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought. Important things. How to turn it on, for example. It is not always that obvious, you know. The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it. That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days. I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first. If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better. But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it. I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done. I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones. The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets. That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage. I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming. I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am. But they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave. I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED. Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light???? RED IS STOP. GREEN IS GO. Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t. And I won’t. Not ever. And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby. And sometimes I make it — for a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be. Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in. As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying. I just throw stuff. In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on. Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I’ve just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry. And I do. Every single time I buy something. I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.” Other contenders should just throw in the towel. Or a tissue.

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Filed under Humor, Stupidity

Tagged as Boomerism, Crying, Humor, Middle-Aging, Technology

September 8, 2011 · 0:00

Twirling

I’m not a funeral girl.

Ever since the time I embarrassed myself and damaged my reputation beyond repair at the funeral of the husband of an office consultant with whom I’d become friendly, well, I’ve tried to avoid funerals. At all costs.

But late last week, Ella, my neighbor here in Maine, invited me to Molly’s funeral, which was held yesterday. At the time of the invitation, Molly was still alive, making the invitation, well, a bit stranger than some. But then of course, Molly was Ella’s dog, a 105-year old dachshund Ella knew wouldn’t fare well through the winter. So she made that hard and necessary decision. Molly would stay in Maine.

But Ella wanted me at the funeral. As her friend and fellow dog lover, I knew I should go.

But I couldn’t stop thinking of the last funeral I attended, the one that made me willing to hurt anyone’s feelings just to avoid another. What happened? Was it really so bad? Does anyone who went to it remember?

Jim’s was a particularly sad passing. He was only 35, the father of four kids under 12, including two adopted special needs children. He died suddenly of a heart attack no one expected while he was playing volleyball with a group of old friends. He had just spiked the ball.

His funeral was impressive. The church was Easter Sunday-packed. It seemed that anyone who had ever known him or his wife, my friend Karen, showed up to pay their respects and to share stories. Karen, who was clearly suffering, delivered the most moving eulogy I have ever heard. She made me laugh, she made me wish I had known Jim, the man who I knew I would now never meet. She made me cry.

And that was the problem.

Now, I’m not a crier. I hate to cry and do it rarely. I do not understand women who feel better “after a good cry.” There is no such thing as a “good” cry. I don’t feel better. I have a stuffy nose, a headache and a level of humiliation that correlates to how publicly I lost control and the number of wet, slimy Kleenexes in my pockets.

So back to Jim’s funeral. It was Karen’s fault — she made me cry. Or Jim’s — he was the one who died. Or it was my sister Judy’s fault, because she had up and died suddenly two years before Jim. Yeah. Judy gets this one.

So there I was at the funeral of a man I had never met, sobbing uncontrollably. Crying harder and louder than anyone else. Harder than his wife. Harder than his kids. Harder than his mother. Harder in fact than any one of the three hundred or so people in attendance who had actually met him. Sobbing so loudly that it echoed off the walls of the octagonal church. Folks were looking at me, wondering who I was. They wondered what Jim had meant to me. They wondered when I was going to stop making an ass out of myself.

They wondered how long our extra-marital affair had been going on.

From the constant jerk of heads in my direction, you’dda thought I was a movie star. But no, it was just me, Sobbing Sadie, who had never even met poor Jim. Had Jim seen my performance, well, I bet he would have been just as happy to have missed that introduction.

I cried all the way back to the office. I’m tearing up even now.

So when Ella came over to invite me to a funeral, well, I was concerned. I was reluctant. I prefer to make an ass of myself on my own terms, or at a minimum to be laughing as I do it. But then Ella told me that there would be twirling.

“Sure, of course I’ll be there,” I said. But still I worried.

In fact, the service was quite nice. We were seven women, and we each said a little something about Molly, lit a candle. Just when I felt the first warm tears forming, Ella got out her baton and saved my pride.

Ella had been head Drum Majorette at her high school. And Pam, Ella’s friend and guest for part of the summer, had been one too; she twirled through college. So Ella and Pam twirled for the gathering, instantly lightening the mood as we all wondered, well, what did twirling have to do with Molly?

The answer was nothing. Nothing at all. Molly, who after all had no thumbs, had herself never twirled. But twirling had everything to do with Ella. It made Ella feel better, and it made the rest of us all smile and know she’d be OK. And that, I realized was the whole point of this and every other funeral.

It took me fifty-four-and-a-half years, but eventually I catch on. Sometimes it just takes a bit longer.

So I’m not going to avoid funerals from now on. But instead of a carton of Kleenex, I’m bringing a baton.