Attribution: Nantucket Historical Association Library, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, having had grandfathers who found it difficult if not impossible to make the transition from horses to automobiles, sympathizes with the old dudes in their painful discoveries that early cars did not respond to voice commands, and slowing down to turn a corner was no longer a horse’s responsibility but the driver’s.
Well, Grandpas Helgeland and Stokes, let the “kid” from your adjusting days tell you that your dilemma was nothing to what he–now in very senior grandpa status himself, faces in trying to preserve some relevance in a tech world that gives him the sensation of being left on the launch pad as everyone else blasts off into space.
While the switch from horses to cars was culturally isolating, the advent of electronic social saturation with its endless communicating devices has created an intimidating isolation for the keeper and his generation.
Were it not for Phyllis and her tech savvy, the keeper would fail at making most phone calls, and even at adjusting his hearing aids.
There is some small comfort in the keeper’s thinking that he likely uses some of the same bad words that his grandpas used when those early cars didn’t respond to “WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!”
Photo by Bill Stokes