Just Go Without Me

The Future is coming, but I'm not going--not if I have to have an "app" to get there. (At the very least, couldn't it be called an application? What's the hurry?) For starters, I have a dumb phone, and I like it just fine. It rings when someone wants to talk to me. But without an iPhone, it's clear that I am slipping further and further behind. My husband is literally flabbergasted that I don't have one, which I quite enjoy watching since hardly anyone gets flabbergasted in these sophisticated times.

This morning's paper has an article about a woman who quit her job as a nurse and now makes a lot more money selling clothing online through an iPhone app. "Now I make better money faster," she says. The heck with sick people. In fact, sick people be damned, The Future has no room for them. It belongs to the young and the strong and the digitally connected. I am none of those things. I tweeted a few times and was bored, but at least I understood the concept. But then the # hashtag showed up. Huh? My son, 25 and extremely digital, explained it to me several times. Sort of like football, I still don't get it: Why would I want to know what everyone else is saying about anything, except maybe a tornado headed my way?

Despite all our advances, like cars that tell you where to go and robots that defuse bombs  and vacuum your living room and frozen sperm you can use later, there's a deadly new superbug--even worse than the last one, which was really bad--on the rise in U.S. hospitals that cannot be stopped! Once it enters your bloodstream, there's a 50% chance you will die. Funny thing: it's spread by hospital workers not washing their hands between patients. I guess there's no app for personal hygiene. Someone should work on that.