I must stress at the outset of this post that I am not dissing my parents. They are capable seniors living in a digital age that is not fully designed for their needs. The stories I am about to tell you in this missive are true, but I am not ridiculing them. I am simply stating their truth.
I am about to turn the page on another decade, and I must say that I am very stressed at the prospect. Sixty. It is a really big-sounding number. SIXTY! I often roll it around in my mouth and try it on for size, but it isn't fitting. It is like a bra that is two cup sizes too small. SIXTY F***ING YEARS OLD!
Yes, I am aware that the alternative sucks. Yes, I am aware that I don't look sixty. (Yesterday, I was told by someone not that much older than that throat-catching number that she thought I was forty-five. She is my new best friend.) Yes, I am aware that age is simply a number on the calendar and that you are only as old as you feel. (Whoever said that probably only lived to fifty-nine.) Let's be frank. Sixty is a big freaking number. 60!
Nobody can claim that you have half of your life in front of you at sixty. When scientists talk about things that will occur by 2050, I do the math and realize that my odds of seeing those things happen are slim. The Divine Spirit willing, Younger Son will be sixty in 2050. Holy Shit. None of this is meant to depress you, dear reader, but I am simply being realistic. Sixty is a big freaking number.
Many things have impressed this reality upon me over the last eighteen months. Some of them were simply age questions. For example, I couldn't get my fourth Covid vaccination for months because I wasn't sixty. Sixty was that magical age line for the government between protecting older people and those of us not there yet. I wasn't old enough. Sixty is the age when my out-of-country insurance will increase. I was fifty-nine when I left Canada, so the premiums were less. Next year, watch me hit the stratosphere.
But, nothing has convinced me more of my age issues than dealing with my parents and theirs. My parents are amazing people. They are both in their mid-eighties, live independently, exercise regularly, and handle all of their own banking, shopping, cooking, and medical needs. They both have a decent amount of computer/smartphone literacy in that they have a basic understanding of email, online banking, texting, FaceTime, Zoom, and (God help me) social media. But my octogenarian parents are still trying to learn these skills at an age when the outside world assumes that everyone understands everything and the never-ending technological changes.
Simply put, technology for people of a certain age is a bitch. We laugh at their ineptitude, but it isn't at all funny. When I tried to explain to my dad that he couldn't actually "call" an UBER, he was befuddled. When I tried to explain to my mom that her cellphone wasn't operating correctly down here in the Southern Home because her service provider was a shitty company, she couldn't understand the difference between a service provider and her actual handset. She asked The Husband to look at her phone as if that would change the problem. When I asked my dad to call said shitty service provider and deal with the situation, he kibbitzed with the operator until they lied to him and told him everything was fixed. I have spent hours lately fixing their cable, internet, and cell phones and updating all of their devices. And here's the thing. I AM NOT MUCH BETTER AT ANY OF THIS THAN THEY ARE. I married a techie and birthed one; I am not one. And don't even get me started on lost and forgotten passwords. Is it all caps or lowercase? Did you use numbers or symbols? Did you write it down anywhere? Did you save the password with facial recognition? Do you use facial recognition? The possibilities and computations are endless. (We are beginning the labourious task of documenting all of their passwords in a notebook. It will take a while.)
To make matters worse, my wonderful brother bought them new phones before they came south and set everything up for them. And yet, they are still using their old phones occasionally because some critical apps, like my dad's hearing aides, are only useable in Canada and can't be duplicated in the U.S. app store. And...we need access to the Canadian app store from down here which we don't have. Do better, Apple.
I am in technology hell.
Last week, The Husband and I spent two hours with a Breezeline technician because the modem in my Other Dad's condo was fried. He has yet to arrive, and we wanted to ensure everything was copacetic before he came. I had spent over an hour on the phone with Breezeline a few days before explaining that the modem was fried. After they disconnected me twice, I insisted on the in-person visit. The technician did indeed replace the modem, but he had to reset all of the network passwords. He wasn't permitted to change the network name or password to something more personal, so he left instructions with The Husband on how to do it. But you can't use an iPhone to do it. He stressed this. It will lock you out of the network. The next day, The Husband and I took his laptop to Other Dad's condo to quickly reset the name and password.
Um...no!
It wasn't possible to do it over the internet even though we were connected to the WiFi. It locked us out of the system. Thanks to the Divine Spirit for my techie. He hardwired Other Dad's desktop computer directly into the modem so that he could access the network. But...his wireless mouse and keyboard were dead, logical after a hiatus of several months. So, he had to plug them into the wall to charge. Three hours later, we were back in his unit to change the password and network name. Without The Husband's knowledge and skill, we would have been fucked.
My brother sent me an email last month warning me that my parents' email verification would change in December. All that we needed to do was input their passwords for their email. That and update all their devices to the latest iOS and find all those passwords to access them. My dad last updated his iPad 45 weeks ago. I'm fucking serious. 45 weeks. The updates took a while. So far, their email is still working. Pray for me.
I have an excellent idea for a business. Tech support that is specifically designed for seniors. Not the Geek Squad, which expects you to understand the basics and employs less than adequate people. I'm talking about a tech support who will come to your home and deal with everything, from password retrieval to how to program your digital TV recorder. Don't tell them how to do it, just do it for them. Don't offer them explanations and instructions; order that UBER for them. The employees' prerequisites need to include Job's patience, a love of people (my dad will make them coffee, and my mom will ply them with chocolate chunk cookies), an aversion to judgement, and an understanding nature. We expect our seniors to be able to navigate new apps and phones every month. It is a loser's game. Let's find a way to make things easy for them. They are twentieth-century people living in a twenty-first-century world. Only some people have access to a techie.
I see myself in my parents. I fear the day when I fear technology. I am scared that there will come a time when it is all just too complicated. I don't want to burden my techies any more than my parents wish to burden theirs. Every time something goes haywire, I hear the exhaustion in my mother's voice. "Two years ago, I could do it all," she says. She's right. But two years is still two years. We don't get younger.
Sixty is a big freaking number. I'm not expecting sympathy. I'm blessed. But I need to acknowledge the fears before I embrace the excitement. That post is coming before the end of the month. The fears are real. This, too, shall I overcome.
.
