Finding My Waze to Answer Call of Duty

I grew up without computers, without cellphones, without the Internet.

In the seventh grade I learned to type with 10 fingers on a real typewriter. To talk to my friends, I went to their homes; I never used our telephone as a child.

In college, I took notes by hand and studied from those notes. I hired a woman to type my dissertation on her typewriter to meet the specifications of the university. For many years in business, I wrote all my memos by long hand.

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Now jump ahead 50 years to today. Technology continues to expand, to enhance and to confuse my day-to-day living.

I usually print the boarding pass for a plane on my computer within 24 hours of leaving. My oldest grandson heard that and insisted that I didn’t need a boarding pass. He grabbed my cellphone, downloaded the Delta app and put the boarding pass on my cellphone. All I now need is my cellphone to show security at the airport and to board the aircraft.

I didn’t know how the technology worked. Thank you, Menachem.

My wife buys a new computer and doesn’t have Microsoft Office on it. She writes enough documents that she needs to have that software.

I used to buy a disc, load the disc on my computer and follow the directions. But there is no disc anymore; everything is downloaded.

We buy Microsoft Office, which only says to go to a certain website, put in the very long password and follow the directions. I try to help my wife get this done, but between us we fail. I call Microsoft Help to solve the problem by phone, but they fail.

In walks another of my teenage grandsons, who determines that the security on the computer prevents downloads of software like Microsoft Office to avoid getting a virus. He goes to the security on the computer, releases the restrictions, and by magic the download works. Thank you, Binyomin.

My TV can accept Netflix, but Netflix requires a connection to the Internet. The regular TV works when connected to AT&T, but it is necessary to connect the TV to the Internet to watch Netflix.

Apparently, the Internet connection was broken, because it worked before, and I couldn’t fix it, even though I knew the various passwords necessary to connect to the Internet at my home.

Another teenage grandson shows up and tries to fix the problem, but he discovers that it does not work, just as I did. However, he has a solution. He uninstalls the Internet connection, starts the connection again and solves the problem. Thank you, Emanuel.

I have records that did not play on my turntable. Emanuel took the turntable apart and fixed the problem.

I have over 200 music discs, and all of them are obsolete, according to my grandchildren. They can find any music on Spotify, and they challenged me to give them a test. I gave them several songs, and they found them on Spotify in less than 30 seconds.

I have over 100 movies, and they tell me that they can find them on the Internet and can watch them free. My music and my movies are all unnecessary.

They can hook up my car to get and make telephone calls hands-free. They no longer need a GPS system in the car and can do it with Waze on a cellphone. Waze not only gives the fastest directions, but also identifies problems on the road ahead to be avoided.

Leo, my son, uses FaceTime to call me free of charge, and we can see each other on our cellphones while we talk. I have no clue how to do it.

I recently discovered that my grandchildren are playing “Call of Duty” on the Internet. In case you don’t know, and you probably don’t, the 2018 “Call of Duty” World League returns to Atlanta. Over 170 teams from around the world will compete in “Call of Duty: WWII” on PlayStation 4 at the Georgia World Congress Center, with a $4.2 million prize purse up for grabs.

The bottom line: Technology is passing me by. I need a Venmo account.