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Glazing Over

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A good thirty years ago (plus), I visited my wasband’s grandparents who had just sold their little house and moved into a care center.  They were in their nineties and had never used a computer and smart phones were still in the future.

Wasband was (is?) a techie/programmer.  As we were sitting with his grandparents, he started talking about his job and I could see the two of them beginning to glaze over.  It was clear that they really didn’t have a clue about what he was discussing.  I remember thinking two things.  First, why doesn’t he notice them and shut up?  Then I thought how sad it seemed that the world was whizzing past them.

Fast forward all these years.  WordPress went wonky on my phone today.  It’s been more or less stable for 18 months, since I got this phone.  In fact, whenever baboons mention that WP isn’t doing something, I keep quiet, since it hasn’t been happening to me.  And now it’s happened to me.

It took me a while to get somebody at WP on the chat function and it became clear to me almost immediately that I have become wasband’s grandparents.

WP: What browser are you using? VS:  I have a Safari icon that gets me to the internet… assume that’s the browser?

WP:  Are you opening WP in the app? VS:  If I have an WP icon, isn’t that the app?

WP:  Can you take a screenshot for me? VS:  Not until I can get my daughter in here to show me how?

VS:  I have the screenshot on my desktop – how do I get it to you?

WP:  Is this issue happening on your laptop, your mobile Safari or the app? VS:  Mobile Safari???

These are just a few.  After about an hour “chatting”, my poor WP guy has had to start a bug report and we’ve moved the discussion over to email.  Not sure when it will get solved.  Luckily everything is working fine (so far, knock on wood) on my laptop.  Phone is somewhat functional, just making me sign in for every comment, which stinks.

My “Happiness Engineer” is probably not happy himself right now, since he spent at least an hour and didn’t fix my problem.  I did give him permission to laugh to himself and roll his eyes during our chat.

In what ways have you become your parents/grandparents?

66 thoughts on “Glazing Over”

  1. cost of stuff kills me
    my dad used to talk about penny candy and now it’s a buckle or a dime (did you know nut goodies today are 50 cents and a pack of gum is 79 cents) bread is 2,95 ? a house in south minneapolis is $400,000. what’s going on ? i was cranked up to find gas at costco for $1.54 last week for a day so my damn truck cost $25 to fill
    butter is over $2 a pound
    i go to aldi for grapes at 99 pizza for 4.99 for garbage can cover size cheese that’s excellent avacados at $.69-99. whole pineapple at $1.29 and chips at $1.29
    my wife just got the walmart black friday big screen tv by being poised at 6:59:59 last night
    50” for $114 or something similar
    i’ve turned into a shopper that know where to buy what, (menards batteries) walmart or menards for dog food walmart for gallons of car oil. costco for peanut or sunflower oil and peanut butter. my tire guy. my mechanic. my banker. a world of wonder is not such a regular thing anymore. it’s familiar redos again and again. i think i can fix this if i try

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  2. wp is like democracy. it’s the worst thing there is except for all the others

    with all the world turning to their devices for communication, interaction, functionality, it’s amazing word press is allowed to jerk you around the way it does. something better will surface and turn into google and then we can complain about that.

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  3. Like my parents and their parents and geezers everywhere, I am largely disconnected to popular culture. The celebrities who capture the supermarket tabloid headlines and make up the roster of recipients of music, movie and television award winners are largely unfamiliar and mean nothing to me. Reality TV celebrities belong to a universe I’ve never visited. As a non-watcher of any professional sports, none of those people mean anything to me.

    The thing is, this isn’t new for me. I stopped following most rock music by the time I was in college and not only could I not identify any current musicians, I couldn’t identify most bands or their music from the ‘70s onward.

    That’s not to say that my universe is unpopulated. It’s just occupied by artists I’ve found for myself and to whom I respond. It’s an eclectic mix, different from the sort of cultural universe my parents and grandparents maintained for themselves in that it’s not just stuck at some place in my youth but draws from more cultures and a much longer time frame.

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    1. I could have written that. I pretended to like R & R because all my friends did. But I had nothing to replace it with. Then just about the time the Beatles were looming large I discovered classical music. To this day every time I hear the Beatles I cringe. Sorry Beatles fans. There are R & R songs here and there I like. In the early 70’s I had a student with whom I built a strong bond, and he introduced me to rock music of the 70’s he had a Jack for picking out songs I would like.

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        1. I like the Beatles alright but none of their music is on my playlist except where someone else happens to sing one. The rock music that I embraced and still like was all blues based. Folk music made and makes up a fair portion of the music I listen to still but I favor the older, more traditional and authentic artists. I could never abide Peter Paul &Mary and their ilk.

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  5. My parents lived most of their life, by choice, in isolation. I have no trouble with being apartment bound these days. My mother mellowed as she aged. I think I have too. I was always afraid I would end up the surly old man my father did. In my 50’s and 60’s I was becoming him, but this question today makes me realize I have not. Well, every now and then I become Looie.
    I have always held my head just above technological waters. I don’t have a smart phone nor any need for one.
    I avoid a WP identity for reasons of avoiding someone. The doily route is more trouble free it seems.
    My pain issues I inherited from no one. I am an oddity in my larger family, and it is large indeed. That family, my mother’s, after whom I take in most ways, is full of people who live into their 90’s. I hope not for me.
    Clyde

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  7. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    The other day I was looking at the family cookbook which I assembled 25 years ago. There is a picture of my grandma on the front, and my face is looking more and more like hers. I was so surprised—that sneaked up on me. Her hair, however, was Snow White at my age, and mine is not even close.

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    2. I look more and more like my mother. We even have the same hair color. It looks as though we paid for an expensive frost job, when it is just a natural variable graying.

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  8. speak of the devil WordPress just erased my deal so I’ll try it with word dictation last night my daughter was over hanging out with Ari and Sergeant York was on because of Veterans Day and I asked her if she was familiar with the story and she said she wasn’t which surprised me because I’m sure Sergeant York has been on at my house at least 25 times I told you it was a classic and one of my favorites and she said that would be meaningful if I didn’t see it so often my dad was kind of a movie aficionado in Fargo as a kid and took pride in it and enjoyed the movies from that era
    I turned into a modern day version and then some because of cable TV and Turner classic movies I watch lots of my favorite movies over and over and I think my telling my kids that this is one of the greatest movies of all time is turned into a standard joke at the house so in that scenario my dad’s movie enjoyment has become my own in a millennial version

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      1. I’m replying to Ben’s comment on the frustrations of passing along cultural touchstones to one’s kids. When my daughter hit the early teens, she became highly skeptical of anything I recommended in music, books, art, etc. She was big on Michael Jackson at the time, so earlier rock music was like Lawrence Welk to her. But I kept on trying to share (without getting pushy about it). She went on rolling her eyes at me.

        One evening I recommended a film. She glowered at me, obviously suspicious because this was an even older film than I usually suggested she watch. I was doing an interview in the living room for an article. Our TV was in the basement, so that’s where Molly was.

        Suddenly the house rocked with the sound of sobbing. Parents, you know what that is like. Each kid has a certain frequency he or she hits when crying. I can be in a crowd anywhere and be struck by the sound of a kid crying, a kid who sounds like mine.

        In panic, I fled down the stairs to find my daughter bawling at the top of her voice, tears flowing like from an open faucet. She spluttered, “HE SHOULDA MAR-HAR-HARIED HER!” Can you guess? Rhett Butler had just told Scarlet Ohara that he didn’t give a damn. Molly was overwhelmed with grief. I was sorry she felt so bad, but part of me thought, “Okay, the next time I recommend an old Beatles tune or a book written long ago, she’s going to listen with a better attitude.”

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        1. I like to watch Perry Mason at 10:30. Right before Perry Mason is on, the Carol Burnett show runs. So often when I turned the channel, the credits for Carol Burnett are running, which are animated. YA came into the room last night while this was happening and wanted to know what in heavens name I was watching. When I said it was just the credits for the Carol Burnett show, she looked at me blankly. I asked her “please tell me you know who Carol Burnett is.” No, she did not. Sigh

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        2. Ugh. I hate it when the college kids don’t know who I’m talking about. And that happens often.
          Today someone referenced Benny Hill. Wow – not many people get that reference anymore either.

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  10. Last night I panicked because I could not get YouTube videos to run. That triggered a three-hour desperate scramble. I can live without talking face-to-face with others. I can live for months never leaving two small rooms. But living without YouTube is unimaginable at this point.

    When I hit a technological IED, I begin planning to get my daughter to rescue me. She actually isn’t a whiz with that stuff, but she is much better than I am and she loves me enough to try.

    After three agonizing hours of beating my head against confusing walls, my problem suddenly went away. Apparently YouTube had gone dark. They fixed the issue and I was once again reconnected to that source of entertainment and information.

    This is so typical of me. When I have a problem, I blame myself. It never occurred to me that last night’s computer snafu was anything but another example of my technological incompetence.

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  11. Like others who have commented here, I am looking more and more like my mom. While growing up I always thought I looked more like dad but that changed about 10 years ago. One nice thing is that mom didn’t have any gray hair until she turned 90. My older sister is completely gray (like dad) and my other sister does have some gray though hard to see because she is a natural blonde. I have yet to see even one gray hair. I am way less judgmental than either or my parents.

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  12. The passing of time has not made me resemble my parents, but I was hugely annoyed when I began to sound like my father late in his life. My voice, once kinda nice, became reedy and wavering like the voices of so many older men.

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  13. At this point I’m five years older than my parents were when they died, so whatever point of physical or mental decline I’ve reached, I’m blazing a new trail. It is however, becoming more evident each day that I’m now married to my father-in-law, and I’m none too happy about it.

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  14. Most pop culture is passing me by. TV, movies, music, the Kardashians (what exactly do they DO??). I don’t miss it much.

    I try to stay current on technology as far as I need to use it for my writing career. If you wanna sell books you gotta be on the internet. But I always say I know just enough about tech to get me in trouble. I have a problem, I think I can fix it myself, and ka-boom! my computer blows up. (Well, not really, but I often compound the problem with my home remedy. Still think slapping the damn machines upside the head once or twice should fix most problems. Used to work great for TVS.

    Chris in Owatonna

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        1. Was particularly suite is knowing that if she didn’t respond, I probably wouldn’t do it. But she hasn’t figured that out yet.

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    2. Fixing TVs . . . there used to be metal tube tester displays in some stores (in my case, it was the Dinkytown Gray’s Drugs) that let you test vacuum tubes from your TV. You’d put tubes in receptacles and push a button or something. If the tube was bad, you would find a replacement and go home to plug it in. Hard to believe now.

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      2. I used to do that when I was about twelve and engrossed in fixing televisions and radios. The tester was at Merwin Drugs in Robin Center in Robbinsdale. You had to find the right socket among the socket array for your particular tube. If it was bad, the replacement tubes were in a compartment underneath.

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        1. I saw one of those testers about a year ago. I was visiting a farm out near Jordan where a pair of brothers, both retired, collect and refurbish vintage radios, adding bluetooth to them if you like. They have barns full of radios. I was telling one of them how I used to test tubes at Merwins and he pointed to a corner of the room where he had one of those testers as part of his accumulation.

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        2. I remember seeing those machines too. Never used one.
          We had the old B&W TV downstairs. I think this was after mom and dad got a nicer color TV upstairs. (There are still marks on the basement floor where we taped the flat antenna wire down.) But the B&W one sat on top of a desk. The screen would go black and you’d bang on the side until the picture came back. Usually took 3 or 4 hits. And one day I smacked it and the TV fell off the desk and face down onto the cement floor. I thought for sure the glass was smashed, but nope; enough frame around it – and built heavy enough- it was all fine. I must have been pretty young; I had to tell mom and dad to get it back up on the dresser. If it had fallen on me, it would have crushed me!
          Many years later I took an old TV apart; the tube was actually very interesting; the heavy, tinted glass front, a kind of waxy layer under that, and then the tube itself.

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      2. Ahh, yes, the Gabors. Although at least one of them acted (Eva?) on Green Acres. But you’re right. Many celebs just hung out on talk shows or game shows and didn’t seem to do much else. One of my amazements at humans is why we’re so fascinated by people who live the (seeemingly) most shallow lives. And DON’T get me started on “reality” TV shows and that cesspool of rising “star/celebs.” Sheesh.

        Chris

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  15. I became my Mother long ago. Interest in everything just for the knowing. No practical reason to know who sang backup to Ray Charles’ Hit The Road Jack other than that she shared Mom’s first name. And I hear, “Wesley! Wesley!” when I hear, “Baby! Baby!”

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  16. Every time my sister visits (wonder if we ever will see each other again) she looks more like our mother. They did not look that much alike before. Has same head tremor, same tilt of the head. But she will never become like her in any other way. My sister moved to Vermilion 4 years ago, and despite what she planner! Is on several committees.

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  17. To answer PJ’s question down here, yes, my son had his surgery and all went as planned. Removed kidney by laporiscopy, so his recovery will be much better. They let him have his cell phone right up to moment he went into OR. Surprised me but he was allowed to have his phone right up to moment he went into OR and I texted almost constantly, which I am sure distracted him. But to prove it was Idaho, the pre-op room was overcrowded, so some medical worker of some kind came in and wondered among patients to see what could be done. They moved my son and two others about to go in to post-op. But that man wondering around was in street clothes and unmasked, in Idaho where COVID is raging.
    He has walked today and they are making him eat. Exactly kinds of food he detests. We should soon find out if tumor was malignant. For all the pressure on understaffed hospital employees they messaged my ex daughter in law three times during procedure and she forwarded to us.
    Re tech, she used to be an Apple Genius, a title for some Apple support staff, but she got all messed up trying to set up a three-way communication. She was all embarrassed.

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    1. He was going to stay with his ex-wife but she and their son and others in that orbit were all exposed to COVID. But their tests came back negative. Seems more than ever likely that they all had COVID when my son moved to Idaho last March. So now he will stay with her. At least until she kills him.

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    2. Clyde, your comment about the text phone reminded me of when YA was getting ready to have her foot surgery a little over a year ago. I actually have a picture (taken on my phone) of her on her phone right after they had done the nerve block on her foot but before she had actually gone into surgery. She was texting and snap chatting away right up until they rolled her out of the room.

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  18. My mom got a computer Quite a few years ago. She struggled with it, but between my brother and I, we kept her going and she has really enjoyed it. Dad wanted nothing to do with it and never touched it. I’ve mentioned here before the struggle he had with numeric keypads and how he’d have mom dial the phone for him. He always struggled with numbers.
    And 25 years ago we tried to get my mother-in-law going on a computer. Oh, that was terrible. She was 200 miles away so tech help was difficult. And sometimes we’d have to just hand the phone to someone else and walk away for a bit.
    Kelly struggles with iTunes and that makes her feel old.
    We use a sound program in the theaters called ‘Qlab’. It’s really pretty easy… so they say. I know just enough to mess it up. But let some college kid come in and they’ve got it running in minutes. Good. I just point it out to them and give them an intro and let them figure it out.

    My mom had a minor stroke last week; not a clot, just some bleeding and BP was high. So she’s in the rehab unit at the senior place. And because she had gone to the ER, she’s in quarantine for two weeks. So she’s a bit out of sorts, different room, OT and PT, and can’t make her left arm work the way she wants it to work (it’s just a little weak – she’s really very lucky) but all in all she’s struggling. The family has had lots of phone calls and texts / emails. Even mom’s legal paperwork; we all knew where it was, but who would have guessed that we wouldn’t be allowed to go get it?? One person was finally allowed into the apartment and got them. She has done a lot of pre-planning and everything is OK for now.

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    2. Robin’s mom just turned 99 and she lives in a senior residence. Ostensibly, she’s in independent living, but it takes a village to maintain that illusion. She has a computer that is at this point quite old with a very out-of-date operating system but at 99 it hardly seems practical to buy a new computer and anyway adjusting to the changes a much newer operating system would likely entail would be more confusing than helpful. The fact that she’s isolated by Covid restrictions makes it impossible to help her with any computer problems she has except by trying to talk her through it. Nevertheless, she manages, within the limits of her failing vision, to send and receive emails and to connect to family and her church for Zoom sessions.

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  19. I have one expression that, if I see it in a mirror, reminds me of my dad’s mom. My penchant for fun-type shoes, and room re-arranging is from my mom’s mom. But lots of my expressions and mannerisms are my mom all the way. And I got my dad’s interest in what makes people tick.

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  20. My parents were very insistent about turning off any light that wasn’t being used, and it really annoyed me. Now I find myself following Husband around turning off lights that heleaves on. That is annoying, too.

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  21. There is a commercial about people turning into their parents, but I can’t think what company it’s for. I just remember the woman insisting her phone doesn’t have silent mode.

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