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My parents are proud new owners of smartphones.  That right there says it all, but I am going to elaborate just a little for fun.

Dad was the first to dive off into the new age phone pool.  Within 24 hours he was ready to toss it back on the bank and retrieve his old flip phone.  He wanted to retreat to his comfort zone of simple talking on it with an occasional brief text.  I was able to convince him to keep it with the promise of producing a little manual of instructions (he couldn’t make head nor tails of the tiny one provided by the phone manufacturer since the print could be measured in micros.)

Finally after a few weeks he had mastered the device.  He got pretty good at making apps just disappear without knowing how he did it.  My uncle Jess, who was already a smartphone pro would include emojis with his texts that he sent him and Dad didn’t rest until he figured out how to install the Google keyboard so he could do the same.  I was quite proud of him.  The bond between Dad and his phone became so strong that he would have little panic attacks if he thought it was broke or not functioning properly; a subject, which is a story all by itself, that will have to wait for another day.

Mom was next to spring off the smartphone diving board.  First of all, she had talked about delving into this new phone thing for quite some time, so I was delighted that she was actually going to do it.  She would listen to her quilting buddies talk of their textings and picture sendings and she wanted in on some of that.

She caught on pretty quick how to use the thing aside from having trouble with the whole “tapping” business.  Somehow she couldn’t seem to get past the notion that she wasn’t on her old IBM at work anymore.  Instead of lightly tapping the spot on the screen she aggressively “stabbed” at it with her index finger, producing nothing from the phone.  This behavior eased up after a while; she figured out that smartphones clam up  when they get beat up.

Suprisingly enough, one thing that Mom and Dad both started using  first was the “OK Google” feature.  I get a little taken aback when I accidently hit the Siri button, so I was surprised when they both latched on to this concept early in their relationships with the phones.  They don’t live together but do go to the same church, so maybe they compared smartphone frustrations on Sunday, I’m not sure, but the Google microphone seemed to be their saving grace (and mine) for the hunting and pecking issues they were both evidently experiencing.

Here’s where the fun comes in.  Rather than taking time perfecting their tapping and texting skills they have spent countless hours speaking to Google repeatedly trying to get it to grant their requests with mixed results.

For example:

Dad Ok’d Google about trying to keep an outdoor battery housing from getting too hot and ruining the batteries.  He couldn’t understand why it kept coming up with “how to keep hate out of your home.”

Mom wanted a recipe for mint tea, simple enough.  You tell me how Google takes “mint tea” and turns it into “pregnant pee.”  Really???  Last time I checked Mom could still speak clearly, I can understand her anyway.

My parents are perfectly capable of conducting meaningful and well understood conversations.  Why can’t Google get on board and meet them in the middle for crying out loud?

This whole thing reminds me of an essay I wrote in college about language differences between men and women.   Here is a link  Say What