Life As a Techno-Tard

God Hears Our Prayers

Hello, all of you cool cats and kittens . . .

Did you catch that Carol reference from Tiger King? Of the many awful things we endured in the Covid-19 pandemic, two winning moments emerged: The airing of the Tiger King documentary, and this video (image below). This Boomer gent was appearing in court via Zoom (you know — to be ‘six-feet safe’ and all) when his camera accidentally got stuck on the “cat filter.”

I genuinely have a lot of empathy for this poor guy. No one ever strives to become the Boomer laughing stock of the world wide web.

I’m not a Boomer, but I’m on the precipice. Regardless of generational pull, I openly 'fess up to my techno-tardedness. I attribute it to my sheer lack of interest in how anything works — systemically, or engineering-wise — coupled with my inability to follow instructions that have more than three steps. ADHD brains are wired for interest-based endeavors, after all. Board game rules? Out the window. Let’s just try playing the game and see where we land! (It’s a miracle I ever learned to play the complex card game, Bridge, but it’s because I was interested in it.)

My son Jack delights in exploiting my plight. He is tech clever. When Jack was eight, we had watched the Bob’s Burgers episode where the Aunt Gayle character had plastered Bob’s restaurant with her artistic paintings of her cats’ assh*les. At that time, I had no idea how to change my desktop computer’s screensaver image. I turned on my computer the next morning to face Jack’s handiwork 👇. So, I learned out of necessity.

Sometimes wingin’ it ADHD-style has its pluses. Take last night’s dinner, for example. Mississippi Roast. The recipe called for one-half jar of pepperoncinis. In my dopamine-seeking “Let’s see what happens if I . . .” mode, I poured in the entire jar. That, ladies and gents, was a WIN (as opposed to many of my ‘culinary experiments’).

And sometimes, I have to let God take the wheel.

I’m super paranoid about my phone being charged at all times, but when one of my besties, Mandy, came for a visit while my husband and son were out of town, she did not share my paranoia. She had no phone charger with her (which I later remedied), and she texted, warning me that her battery had run down to 6%. My amygdala nearly exploded — I was horrified.

I needed to pick her up at a random address in Pensacola. Even though I’d dropped her off there the night before, I could not remember the street name to save my soul. You know — that challenged short-term memory thing. I punched in the street name I thought it was on my Jeep’s navigation screen and ended up on the opposite side of the city in a rather sketchy area. I turned off Google Maps and turned on my Waze app.

And that’s when the real comedy ensued.

I called Mandy’s son John in Tennessee to see if he knew where she was. While I was trying to hear John, I discovered that my prankster son had programmed my Waze app to talk like Paddington Bear. I couldn’t hear John over Paddington Bear’s clipped British accent announcing loudly: “Your car windows could use a scrub. If we were in Peru, the spider monkeys would do it for a few grapes, of course.” And for a moment, I lost the plot as I wondered, “What the f*ck is Paddington Bear doing in Peru?!?”

I pulled over to the side of the road to try to fix my app. Paddington Bear piped up: “Please use your indicator. We don’t want to startle drivers behind us.” I could not figure this out. Surely it had to be somewhere in settings . . . But Paddington Bear was not done. “Driving is a lot like marmalade. Smooth and steady is always best.”

Sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck. Mindy was about to be stranded, waiting for me on some random residential side street. And it was like 100 degrees and humid. Desperate, I called Jack in San Diego. “Mom, I can’t tell you how to reset it. I have to show you in person,” he insisted. (He was probably right about that, actually.)

It never dawned on me to look for a YouTube tutorial. I was so panicked. The sands of time were running out on the hourglass. I pulled away from the curb to start driving again to a safer part of town. Paddington Bear grew increasingly unhelpful in his rhetoric. He asked if he could honk my horn because it “sounds like fun.” And then he added, “Oh, I’m a bit peckish. Is it tea time soon?” Now I was the idiot talking back at Paddington Bear’s disembodied voice. “What happened to your f*cking grapes?!? Did you give them all to the spider monkeys? I’d like to turn you into marmalade . . .”

My phone rang at exactly the right moment. Mandy had 3% battery left, which gave her 10 seconds to tell me which street she was on. Mandy is that trusting, faithful Christian who never worries about anything as she Mr. Magoos her way through life, ignoring the near-misses in her wake. Of which I was nearly one.

I must tell you, there are few things in life more infuriating than being techno-tarded with a short-term memory issue. Everything requires a password, which I can never remember. Then it requires a password reset. Then I type it in wrong (I’m a terrible texter) and it doesn’t recognize my reset password, so I have to reset it. Again.

Modern life is not optimized for ADHDers like me. I don’t want to live in a world where I need three remote controls to operate my TV. And a spreadsheet of passwords.

But here we are.

It’s at times like these I take refuge in the final words of Paddington Bear, before Jack helped me zap him from my Waze app:

“Go with the flow. Let our adventure begin!”

P.S. If you’re not a vegan, you, too, may want to try this Mississippi Roast recipe — it’s killer!:

Ingredients:

• Chuck Roast

• 1 Ranch Powder Packet

• 1 Au Jus Packet

• 1 Stick of Butter

• 1/2 Jar of Juice and Pepperoncini Peppers (but I recommend the entire jar!)

Mix it all together and cook it in your crockpot on low for 8 hours. Serve with rice, potatoes, (or in my case, corn tortillas).

Enjoy! And if you try it, please let me know how you liked it?