John Cannon
The Independent
ASHLAND —
I am finding it increasingly difficult to communicate with my oldest granddaughter, who is a freshman at Paul G. Blazer High School and soon will turn 15.
It is not because we have had a falling out and suddenly dislike one another. It is because I do not speak her language. To make matters worse, I have little interest in learning her language.
I began to notice this widening communication gap between grandfather and granddaughter last spring when I had the usually pleasant task of taking my granddaughter to George M. Verity Middle School each day.
“Aryssa never told me when she needed to be picked up to go to school,” I told my wife one morning.
“She wants to be picked up at 7:15,” my wife replied.
“How do you know?” I asked. “Did you talk to her?”
“No, she Twittered me,” she replied.
From that day forward, my granddaughter never told me when she needed to be picked up. Instead, she would Twitter that information to my wife, who because of her work schedule never took my granddaughter to school. Nevertheless, because she could Twitter, my wife became the recipient of an essential piece of information I needed to know but was not the least bit important to my wife. If my wife didn’t relay the information to me, my granddaughter would never have been picked up on time — and I probably would have been blamed for it.
Sure, I could have solved this communication gap by learning to Twitter, but even the possibility of communicating more with my granddaughter — not to mention my daughter, son and even my wife — has yet to inspire me to do so. I doubt if that will change, and I will be pushing up daisies before I learn to Twitter.
When it comes to how I communicate with my fellow human beings, I am so 20th century.
At least 10 times a week, someone invites me to join Facebook, but of the 500 million in the world who are on Facebook, I am not one of them. Not only do my children and even my oldest granddaughter have Facebook accounts, so does my wife.
I also am not among the 122 million users of MySpace. Twitter claims it has 145 million registered users. By not learning to Twitter, I clearly am in the minority.
I do have a cell phone, but I was probably one of the last people in Ashland older than 8 to get a cell phone. With my cell phone, I could Twitter, call up the Internet, take pictures and probably even send pictures of myself to others. But I don’t do any of those things. All I do with my cell phone is receive and make phone calls. How old fashioned is that? Shoot, there are at least one or two days a week when I even forget to carry my cell phone.
Still, I’m glad I have a cell phone and can see many advantages to it — most of which I don’t take avantage of.
As further evidence of how I am still living in the last century, I still have a land line to provide me with telephone service at home. None of my children do.
I also regularly waste money on stamps to pay bills through the mail instead of paying them directly online. However, this is changing. Each month I pay more and more bills online instead of writing checks.
I regularly communicate through e-mail, but most of my e-mails are job related. In fact, my wife and I dropped my e-mail account at home because I was not using it enough. The e-mail address I use is the one that sends messages to the newspaper. If you want to e-mail me at home, you have to use my wife’s account.
Since I have spent the last 40 years of my life in the communications industry, I suppose I should be among the first to learn new ways of communicating with my fellow humans, but I am obviously lagging way, way, way behind in this area.
Maybe I should change and get with it before the world of communications leaves me far behind. Maybe I should start my own blog.
But first I have to learn what a blog is.
JOHN CANNON can be reached at jcannon@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2649.
