Last night, the grandkids had a little fun with the old guy. Miss T. (b. 1999), concluded that Grandpa's electronic and computer skills were (her exact words) "stone age."
Is she correct? Let us review the circumstances. I was here, in B–ld-r, trying to watch the Cornell-Kentucky sweet-sixteen on streaming video (CBS again gave the Big Red the back of its network-y hand) while simultaneously following the Kansas State-Xavier double-overtime epic on Tivo (slightly behind real time so as to sidestep the mini-dramas on the subjects of beer and deodorant). Miss T and Mr. O were snuggled in bed with their mom out there near the Pacific shore and we and they were sending messages back and forth on Facebook chat. Hey, not exactly a "stone age" situation.
The kiddies were testing my knowledge of IM acronyms, and I was failing badly. I didn't know ROTFL or JK or TMI or LMAO. Then Mr. O became dissatisfied at the pace of the conversation, so he started sending me messages ("texting" me is the jargon) on the cellphone, thereby giving me another device to manage. Which is when I ran out of hands, and in frustration, told what HF (according to SLC), also known as MT) calls a "stretcher." I said (or wrote, rather) to Miss T. and Mr. O., something to the effect of "what do you mean I don't know about electronic media. I used to IM all the time with my grandparents."
Frankly, they didn't buy it. I can't blame them; they know that my grandparents didn't have much English.
Meanwhile, the Ivy League fell further and further behind, mostly because Kentucky was quick enough to step around the screens and stop Cornell's three-point game. In the other bracket, Kansas State lasted it out.
I know that it's negligent not to enlighten myself about useful chat acronyms. Nevertheless, I suspect that the o-so-up-to-date grandkids at the other end of the IM line are also missing something. They probably think that a "whopper" is a hamburger. They probably don't know what a "shellacking" is. Or shellac, for that matter. Probably think that it's something that originated in the Stone Age.
Leave a Reply