Life is so complicated!

I sound old. According to my kids I look old, think old and occasionally act old, so I suppose I should just accept the fact.

Do you remember when phone service didn't come in bundles and didn't have options? You got a basic line that you just might share with the neighbors a half-mile down the dirt road. Pick up and check for a dial tone or a voice before you just started dialing. The line might be in use. No caller ID, no call waiting, no call forwarding, or star-whatchamawhozit. No three months free after which you get hit with a bill that blows your socks off and that you've agreed to keep around for at least another 21 months. Thankfully, I have yet to fall into that trap.

Then there was the TV. The little 13" one--you were upscale if it was color!--with the dial that you got up from your chair and turned to change the channel, and if you had trouble getting good reception you moved the rabbit ears around a bit, or in the case of those elusive UHF channels, spun the outer rim of the dial that sometimes worked miracles.

Then came cable. Oh the wonders of cable. If you just paid for TV, you wouldn't have to watch commercials. Yeah, right. Now there are over 230 channels worth of commercials. Sports 24/7. Movie channels, news channels, weather channels. If you can figure out how to use the remote that comes with the dish, or the direct TV, or the cable, or, or, or.

I remember back when it was a HUGE deal that our little school had a VCR machine. My goodness we were on top of the latest back then. We students would gather around in awe to watch the latest tape of a history commentary or something equally riveting. Of course it was more entertaining to watch the teachers fuss, fidget, call in backup, stand on their heads and grin just right before the thing would work.

Now I am paying for laughing at them.

Because now there's the VCR and the DVD player and the remotes to go with it, with a half-dozen or more buttons on those remotes that I'll never use, mainly because the print is too small for me to read what they're for, and the owner's manual has been too poorly translated from Japanese for me to understand it. I mastered setting the time on every machine we've ever purchased, but I have to admit that operating the latest electronic gadget (DVD player/ recorder) is going to eat my lunch. I am quite determined. Or I was. Lately I have been so tired. Tired of fighting everything. It's so easy to holler for ds#2, who flits through the buttons like he's setting the toaster and voila--the machine does exactly what he asks it to.

On another day I will refuse to give in. Tonight I am going to curl up and dream of a turntable, and how simple it was to pop on a record and set the needle down just right and let it play. And occasionally change that needle--probably the most difficult technical challenge of the time. Those were the days.