Calendar Shaming

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published May 8, 2019] ©2019

Techno shaming is nothing new to me.  Fortunately, I am impervious to it.

Every few months, I meet former co-workers for happy hour, usually to celebrate one of our birthdays. At the end of each, we generally try to schedule the next one.  This is when everyone but me takes out their phones and calls up their calendar app. 

Although I have my phone with me, it remains buried in my purse. Instead I pull out a teeny spiral notebook on which I will note the date and location of the next event which I will write in my paper month-at-a-glance calendar at home.

But, they counter, how do you know your schedule?  Easy: I have no life. Olof and I are strict adherents to this way of living. We both lived over-scheduled lives for decades. But no more. Our kids refer to us as “terminally inertial.”  And we couldn’t be prouder.

 

 I like looking at my month-at-a-glance calendar and seeing everything right there.  Apparently you can do that with your phone calendar app too. But I’d have to turn on my phone and find it. And need a microscope to read it. 

I confess that I did in fact try using the calendar app in a moment of deranged techno bravery.  But then Apple tricked me into upgrading my phone to the next version and it ate all my appointments. Maliciously.  I have never forgiven it. 

I know some people who can’t wait to upgrade their cell phones when a new version comes out. Personally, I’d rather eat my own organs.  Unsolicited updates and undesired upgrades are the curse of the modern world. They guarantee that whatever worked before will never work again.

When the phone ate my calendar, the kids said, well, you should have backed up your phone.  Why?  I don’t need to back up my paper month-at-a-glance calendar.  The only way that data gets lost is if the house burns down. 

My month-at-a-glance calendar sits right next to my land line which all by itself gets a lot of flak. I admit our land line is being used increasingly less.  People try to tell me that I could change that number to be my cell phone number.  Nope.  I don’t want to change my cell phone number either.  In fact, I don’t want to change ANYTHING. No good comes from it.   My landline number is my CVS number and my number of record for pretty much everything, including our financial accounts, credit cards and utilities. When I call, a disembodied voice says, “I see you are calling from a number in your profile.”  Yup, I sure am!  I am NOT messing with it.

We like our land line. There is a lot to be said for a phone that can be used without a manual. You can’t drop it in the toilet.  It automatically recharges. It doesn’t try to trick me into upgrades.  Besides, it's been my number for decades (even if the area code has changed about six times.)  I'm hoping it will be able to be transferred to the Alzheimer's facility with me because it will probably be the only thing I'll still remember.

Our land line phone is attached to an answering machine that blinks.  I know how to listen to messages and to erase them when I’m done and you will have to pry that machine out of my cold dead hands.  This is in contrast to the terror I feel when I’ve missed a call on my cell phone and it has gone to the dreaded Voice Mail which I am then forced to try to access.  Usually I end up inadvertently deleting the message instead. It’s probably for the best.

I recently cut out a cartoon strip where a daughter is trying to teach her elderly father how to use a phone app which he refuses to try.  She concludes, “I guess it’s never too late to stop learning.”  As far as techno stuff goes, I couldn’t agree more.  It just causes me stress.

  

As for not mastering the calendar app on my cell phone, it probably helps that I have a phenomenal memory for dates.  I still remember all my childhood friends’ birthdays.  It’s like a little pop-up thing in my brain.  From time to time people have said to me, “You must keep phenomenal records to know that date” and I say, “nope, I just remember dates.”  Sure wish I could have figured out a way to monetize it. 

So even though I’m writing down the date of the next happy hour, I don’t really need to.  I’ll remember it.  But what I don’t have a phenomenal memory for is locations.  Hence the little spiral notebook. 

I’m happy to let my co-workers scroll their calendar apps to their little hearts’ content. I’ll just wait patiently.