It's So Funny How We Don't Talk Anymore....

The other day I arrived at work with my nightgown draped over my arm.

True story.  No I wasn't doing the 'walk of shame' and I hadn't recently escaped from some institution that denied me the use of scissors or well...my arms for that matter.

Nevertheless there I was was, nightgown in hand. 

It's easily explained away, I sit in a cubicle that is situated directly under an air conditioning vent which means that despite the fact that it may in fact be April or August, you will probably find me with my arms covered in some kind of 'shrug' or wrap. My favorite one is this little stretch black cotton number that has 3-quarter sleeves and is in fact the same color and fabric as my nightie. So running out the door, I grabbed my 'shrug' and ended up at work with my night-gown.

This all led me to think that maybe, just maybe, I needed to slow down a bit.

I've always hated the term multi-tasking. Probably because I am not one of those people who easily does it. For MASH fans, I've always subscribed to the Charles Emerson Winchester, III methodology, (must be said in a condescending pseudo-British Boston accent) "I do one thing, I do it very well and then I move on".

However, I live in this world that insists that we go at everything with breakneck speed and somehow the iconoclast in me is roused and I feel frantic at the loss of peace, quality, thoroughness. The truth is, you just can't rush everything.

I've always liked to say I am analog in a digital world but of late, I feel more like I'm unplugged and acoustic!

Non-company just moved everyone to a new social networking interface called "Yammer". Probably some of you Millenials are familiar with it. It's like Facebook...only instead of updating people on how much you love your husband, what you had for lunch or how your trip to Disney went, people on Yammer, well, yammer about how much they love their job, how they wish they could step out for lunch but are stuck completing their end of the month reports, and how that trip to visit X-Customer in Scranton went.

Once again, the dissenter in me rears her ugly head and bemoans the fact that people have quit writing letters, having face to face conversations, and relating to people. The other morning, I found myself yammering to my team who were sitting inches away that I would be in training all morning and my self-loathing reached epic proportions.

What's more ironic is that the training was all about engaging in respectful dialogs with one's colleagues! Basically, Non-Company could have saved itself several grand if they had just yammered out one 'tweet' outlining the Golden Rule, "Do Unto To Others As You Would Have Done To You". When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues, he sniffed derisively and huffed to me, "Not everyone's religious!" I tried but failed to restrain myself from saying that it was not a Bible verse as such, but a universal maxim that has similar application in, but not limited to Judaism, Confuscism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Zoroastrinism, and Christianity.

It's hard to observe the Golden Rule though or any rule for that matter when you're safely ensconced in your cubicle pecking away at your keyboard. Or in your home for that matter. I cannot even count the times when I've read the 'comments' section after an article and felt my stomach roil as I read remarks from otherwise seemingly benign, well-adjusted human beings who when roused could rival the meglomania of Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler put together. Or possibly the late Kim Jung Il, Sadaam Hussein,Yasser Arafat and Hugo Chavez put together. Sometimes it's as if, not hearing the words aloud prevents us from being able to filter, to restrain our malice, to temper our words with kindness.  One of my favorite theologians and humorists, the late Jamie Buckingham once said words, that I've quoted not once but hundreds of times "Sometimes it's better to be kind than to be right".

The next time you want to weigh in on an issue, Yammer with your colleagues, Facebook with your friends, maybe get up and walk to see them, pick up the phone, uncap the pen and relate personally. Okay, perhaps I reached a bit on the last one, but I've always been drawn to the fact that the Apostle Paul (and yeah, maybe I am being a bit 'religious' here) stressed the fact that he wrote his letters 'in his own hand' (probably depending on the era, his own hand might have meant a Royal Typewriter, an IBM Selectric, or a Mac) but the point is, he underwent considerable trouble and pain to obtain the parchments, the quills, ill to the point of death, Paul went out of his way to communicate, to relate. And his words form approximately half of the whole New Testament not to mention becoming the basis for the early Christian church.

So slow down a bit, get out from behind the PC, switch off your 'droid for an hour, and talk. Or you too might find yourself clutching your nightgown over your arm and wondering where it all went wrong.

The Family Communication Hub

I have a small confession to make, one which will pretty much brand me as a hypocrite.

I am now the owner of... a smartphone. A gen-u-wine, android-powered piece of evil that is supposed to make me hipper, brighter, tech-savvy and have whiter teeth. Ok, I threw that last one in.

I know in my first piece some months back, I branded myself as a reactionary and expressed contempt for these objects. I maintain my contempt, but the sad fact is, you almost can't get just a 'regular cell phone' today and my cell phone company wanted to charge me MORE for their non-Android phones, the one I could find at all. Ok, the conspiracy theorist in me, could go on about this for...well, how much time have you got? But, the truth is...like social media; I guess this is is just the way things are.

My first stirrings that I wasn't exactly a technophile came about two Christmases ago, when my niece, Persephone (names have been changed to protect the innocent) seeing my car pull in the driveway as I dutifully dragged myself to Christmas dinner, came running over to me in full shriek. Immediately, Norman Rockwell-esque images flooded my mind, and I was all warm inside, "My little niece...can't wait to see her Auntie!" As I opened the car door, a very different child confronted me, "Auntie, I got DS!". Neophyte that I am, and missing the oh-so-critical 'a'; I took a few steps back, starting to say, "I'm sorry you don't feel well, and I'm sure Mommy and Daddy will take you to the doctor and he'll make it all better..." when she thrusts this notebook-like object under my nose. "Look Auntie!", she says grasping a stylus in her hand like a secretary about to take dictation, "It's got games, I can go on the internet, see all my friends..." I'm thinking, 'she's 7, I mean, it's not like she needs the internet to send critical work emails, or to liaise with the home office.'
Which was nearly my reaction a few months later when she was given a laptop computer.  To put it in perspective, I was in my LATE 30's when I got my FIRST personal laptop computer.

So to put it mildly, I am a late bloomer when it comes to technology.

After my new device came, I took myself down to the store to have all of my pictures and contacts moved from my old and apparently so low-tech that the rep on the phone nearly laughed out loud when I gave him my model and serial numbers SIM card to my new more hipper and fashion-forward SIM. As part of the service, the cellular representative, who like all of the people in my life these days, probably was born the week that Family Ties had it's farewell episode, proceeded to give me a crash-course in all the things my 'droid could apparently do. It was a lot like when fast talker John Moschitta, Jr. aka 'The Micro Machine Man' used to run down all of the attributes of those amazing little shape-shifting toys in the space of a minute and a half or the weird unintelligible words of the auctioneer hawking cars at the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction. That is, if Moschitta, Jr. or the auction-man also happened to speak very quickly in Greek, Swahili or Russian. "Okay folks, here you have your apps, your apps, swype, give me swype and you have your net, give me net, I say net access, net access, pinch it, pinch it and it gets smaller, smaller I say, give me smaller, spread your fingers, I say spread em, and it gets larger...give me larger"

As he droned on...I zoned out. My mind drifted to a happier place, before 'droids, I-Pods, MP3's, Tablet PC's, laptops, etc. I thought affectionately back to the days when my Mom carried a cell-phone the size of a masonary brick, it's long black plastic antenna protruding through the zipper of her purse. I thought back to my father's car which was equipped with an equally brick-like phone in a cradle housed in the console next to the driver's seat, the hands' free option that so dazzled my friends, press one button, 'beeeepp' connect with the microphone crouched in the window corner and he would transact business all the way to our school, a long wire-like antenna protruding from the roof of the car.

Back when the family communication hub consisted of a phone with a looonnng extension cord that let you walk all the way from the breakfast nook to the dining room and if you were nimble and determined enough to the living room sofa where you could sit down for an intimate conversation heard only by...well...everyone in the living room or the bedroom beyond. I used to love to wind myself in the cord and see how many revolutions it took to get free again. I think my record was 9. With a cell-phone you're too free and ambulatory, consequently you miss things. If I hadn't been wound up in the cord and trapped in the kitchen; I'd have missed the moment when our crazy, clumsy cat BJ while in the midst of a fight with another cat, missed his footing, tripped and flipped himself into the family swimming pool.

As for texting, in the 1990's with a houseful of people coming and going at different times, texting was a spot on the breakfast nook where a sheaf of scratch paper fashioned from cut-up backs of those pesky Val-Pak coupons and a chewed-up pencil resided. It was there you got all you needed to know, "We've gone to bed, please don't unplug the coffee maker, we're going out early in the morning, see you when we get back. Love, Mom". Important information like, "Jessie's staying over night, so you're sleeping on the couch, try not to wake the girls!" Or chores, "On your way home from school, could you please pick up a veggie for supper, cauliflower would be good or maybe green beans, NO LIMA BEANS, your sisters won't eat them!"

Yep, the good old reliable Family Communication Hub...for my money you can keep the droid...It'll never beat a coil-y phone cord and a chewed up pencil!