My dad was born in 1957. I wouldn't call him old, but I think classic is an appropriate description. His parents lived through the depression, and so raised their ELEVEN children in similar fashion, more out of habit than anything else. They all worked hard, and had few luxuries. I wouldn't say they were struggling to feed their children, but they didn't have lots of gadgets and doodads to play with and destroy every other month. My dad didn't have a computer growing up- nobody did. There is a huge gap in technology knowledge between my dad and I. He just hasn't ever needed it.
When I was a junior in Highschool (so 2003-04 school year) he bought a desktop computer. This wasn't the first computer in the house. Before this, he had a hand me down computer from my uncle from the early 90s. I played a lot of Santa's Jetpack and Frogger on that thing. My uncle used it for speech therapy or something like that (my dad moved in with my uncle when I was in 4th or 5th grade. My uncle had suffered from a heart attack and needed a lot of supervision, and I think my dad was tired of living in a 1 bedroom apartment). There was a whole set of floppy disks with programs on them.
Anyhow, my dad finally bough his own computer in 2003. It was awesome. It was brand new, and much faster than my mom's desktop that was purchased 6 years earlier and affectionately known as "The Dinosaur." My mom had upgraded to a laptop, but we were only allowed to use it for homework. Any games or IMing were to be done on the dinosaur only.
My dad STILL owns only that computer. It has been 10 years. A couple years ago for Christmas we bought my parents webcams so we could skype with them. My dad's computer doesn't support video chat. I didn't even think of that as an issue. When I went off to college my dad learned how to e-mail. I wish I had printed out that first message. It was in all lowercase letters, no punctuation, and one line.
Something like:
"hey sarah its dad how is college i miss you sorry i dont know how to make the letters big or go to the next line or put and periods well i better go its been thirty minutes typing love you dad"
I tried to message him back with instructions. I got something like this:
"its okay ill figure it out
love dad"
Improvement.
And that is how I think of my dad and computers. He isn't into technology toys. He likes his tvs to be new, but other than that, he doesn't do much. Especially with computers. He checks his e-mail abotu once a week and goes on his way. He would much rather be outside gardening, or fixing his car, or watching sports, or anything other than browsing the web.
Imagine my surprise when he sent me a picture message on my phone a couple months ago.
Imagine my further surprise when he texted me last week to let me know he had ordered a birthday present for Evan from Amazon. I didn't even know he was aware of Amazon.
What I have discovered is, my dad is not technologically incompetent. He is slower, sure. But when he learns something, he does it right. Evan's package came gift wrapped today. It looked lovely and I am thoroughly impressed. He just chooses not to over saturate his life with tech gadgets. A lesson I think we could all take. There are so many things to experience, so go and do!
