Last Friday, we drove all the way to mom’s place to take her out to cancel her old cell phone plan, and start a new one, but since her old 3G flip phone was about to be obsolete, she got a new one that runs on 4G. The new phone is still a flip phone, so you would think she could figure out how to use it like her old one. Nope.
Aside from the fact that the new ones don’t hold a charge for a week like the old ones do (she was dismayed that it was dead after six days), she couldn’t figure out how to make a call on it. So, she called me on her land line to ask for technical support. Turns out she was looking at the schematic drawing in the instructions, and pressed the keypad number on the drawing instead of the button to which the number pointed. *headdesk*
She couldn’t figure out how to clear that number, which evidently wanted her to install some app she didn’t want. I couldn’t give her instructions for clearing it without being able to see the phone, but she eventually started fiddling with it until the message went away. Since I had previously given her instructions for calling my number from her cell phone (told her to get in the habit of dialing 1 first, just like on a land line), she was finally able to call me.
This took her two land line phone calls for my “tech support.” Finally, half an hour later, she successfully called me from her cell phone. All I can think is thank god she didn’t get a smartphone. She’s not stupid, and she’s not losing her marbles, but she simply cannot learn any new tricks in her 90s. As it stands, she never could figure out how to get into her cell phone’s voice mail, let alone erase old messages, and no amount of instruction could cure that.
Oh, well. We’re going to visit again this weekend. No doubt we’ll have to spend a good half hour training her how to use her new phone, which probably works 95%+ the same way as her old one did.
This reminds me of when we plugged an address into the on-dash GPS in her car, which worked fine, but then later, she couldn’t figure out how to clear it, so that it didn’t keep trying to direct her there on subsequent trips. Her aide couldn’t figure it out, either. Then we had to drive over there to take her car to her dealer for service, and I just started fiddling with it as soon as we pulled out of her driveway. Took me less than two blocks to cancel it. It was still stored for future use, but cleared from memory. Evidently, old dogs can learn new tricks (ours does), but nonagenarians who really have no interest in learning how to use technology that wasn’t in widespread use 30+ years ago either can’t, or won’t.
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