www.technophobia.com or,

Can You Drown While Surfing the Net?

by Rose Madeline Mula ©2003 reprinted from www.seniorwomen.com

Read about her new book:
If These Are Laugh Lines, Im Having Way Too Much FUN

Here we are riding the wave of the golden age of technology!  Isnt it exciting?   Well, not to everyone.   In fact, many golden-agers (as well as middle-agers) refuse to acknowledge the entire phenomenon, hoping it will go away. 
     I know, because most of my friends suffer from terminal technophobia.  As far as they are concerned, Thomas Edison is responsible for most of the worlds ills.  Electricity is a foolish extravagance which they would prefer to do without if at all possible.   In fact, one does.  Sharon lives in an unwired, remote area of Maine and makes do with a generator which she uses only for an hour or two a day when absolutely necessary. 
     And if they consider Thomas Edison a villain, that gives you a clue as to how they feel about Henry Ford.  Despite that, however, because of sheer necessity, they all do have a car in the driveway instead of a horse and buggy in the barn.  They would prefer the latter, but the old gray mare is not a feasible choice in todays environment.   Parking a horse at the mall or the local super market (both of which they abhor, of course) would be a problem.  No hitching posts. 
     In our youth, before any of us could afford automobiles or other new-fangled gadgets, my friends considered me to be quite respectable and sensible.  Not any more.   Irene and Nancy started having their doubts years ago when I acquired a touch-tone telephone.   It was bad enough that our grandparents were forced to say farewell to the friendly operator who placed their calls and to accept rotary dialling instead.  And now push buttons.  Ridiculous frivolity.  They stubbornly refuse to relinquish their old rotary phones despite their increasing frustrations with reaching Voice mail systems that require touch-tone to make menu selections.  You dont even want to get them started on that subject.  Trust me.
     Furthermore, Nancy, who lives in a three-story house with her single rotary museum piece, cannot understand why I need three phones in a one level, five room condo.  As for memory dialling, re-dialling and call waiting   Foolish excess! 
     Then theres my answering machine.  Ridiculous.  So what if I miss a call or two, they reason.  Whos going to be calling me whos so important he or she cant call back?  My car cell phone, of course, is pretentious beyond belief in their view.  They dont buy my explanation that I have it only for emergency use.  Its true.  Im so cheap that if I need to make a call while on the road, Ill go miles out of my way to find a pay phone first; but my friends are convinced that I spend hours tootling down the highway with my flip phone to my ear, chatting aimlessly with no one in particular, just to look cool.  And at my age.  How pitiful.   Obviously the "death rays" from my microwave oven have fried my brain.
     And why in Gods name do I possibly need two television sets and two VCRs?  One TV they would forgive, since they each finally caved in a few years ago and acquired one.  Janet even has cable.   And, amazingly, Irene and Nancy also each own a VCR.  Irene received hers as a gift two years ago and has never plugged it in.  Nancy bought hers to tape her favorite PBS show in case it is scheduled to air at a time she cant be home.  However, she adamantly refuses to learn to program it.  Instead, if  the show begins in six hours, and she plans to be out all day and not home in time, she puts a long-playing tape into the VCR and starts the recording before she leaves.   The fact that I actually learned to program both my VCRs is further evidence that I must be in league with the devil. 
     The ultimate proof of this sacrilegious affiliation is my most recent depravity my computer.   Good Lord, why?  they exclaim.    I obviously have gone completely berserk.   And they have no idea how much I paid for it.  If they ever find out, theyll cart me off to the nearest loony bin and offer novenas day and night to whatever saint is in charge of the hopelessly demented and corrupt.
     They probably think Im using my computer to seduce teen-age boys on a chat line.  Theyve heard about degenerates who surf the net.  Theyre not sure what "surfing the net" means, but they know its evil.  What other reason could I possibly have for buying such a device?  Yes, they know I write; but what was wrong with my old IBM Selectric?  Heaven knows, it took them years to accept even that.  "Progress" may have forced our forebears to abandon quill pens in favor of typewriters,  but why the need to switch from the Royal manuals we all learned on?  They worked perfectly well. 
     I try to explain all the wondrous worlds computers can accessall the books in the Library of Congress, the New York Public Librarys reference desk, entire encyclopaedias complete with audio and video, world wide news,  up-to-the-minute stock market information,  medical updates, consumer protection reports, the complete works of Shakespeare,  movie reviews, the wealth of immediately accessible travel information and the ability to make instant reservations,  genealogical data..and so much more.  Like a proud parent I tell them that my computer is so smart it actually changes its own clock from standard to daylight savings time and vice versa.   I gush about the convenience of E-mail, the marvellous graphics,  the on-line foreign languages courses, cooking demos, home maintenance tips  I offer to demonstrate some of these wonders.  Forget it. They refuse to get within twenty feet of what they consider the infernal contraption, even if its turned off.   Do they fear they will be contaminated just by osmosis?  Maybe if I give them crosses to hold and garlic bulbs to hang around their necks, they might risk getting closer.  Then, again, maybe not. 
     Theyre happy in their non-tech cocoons; and Im too busy shopping for a scanner/fax machine/copier to keep trying to coax them out.  I wonder how this will all be resolved in Paradise.  Do you suppose well be given a choice of accommodations in the  Garden of By-Gone Days or the Eden of Electronic Wonders?   I know which theyd choose, of course.  And me?   Well,  theyve been my friends forever, after all;  and we always swore nothing would come between us. 
     Ill really miss them.

Rose Mula was an executive assistant, a public relations specialist, and an operations manager for a New England theater chain before discovering a passion for writing. She has written business and trade articles to earn a living, and humor for the fun of it.

Her work has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Yankee, Modern Maturity, The Christian Science Monitor, The Reader's Digest, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, and more than six dozen other magazines and newspapers. Actually-thousands of newspapers, since one of her essays, The Stranger in My Mirror (originally titled, The Stranger in My House), was reprinted in Ann Landers' nationally syndicated column in 1999, without Rose's byline. Ms. Landers explained that she had received it from her cousin in Phoenix and wanted to share it with her readers even though she didn't know the author. When Rose left a phone message for her, Landers herself returned the call personally, with gracious compliments and apologies, and she promptly printed an attribution.

Meanwhile, Rose did some sleuthing and found her Stranger running rampant (and nameless) on dozens of websites, all but one of which claimed no prior knowledge of the author but were happy to hear from her and add her name. The exception was the owner of a site who claimed she had had the story for over twenty years. Not true, Rose pointed out, because in the essay she mentioned VCRs, which were very rare back then, and ATMs, which didn't exist for years later.

Rose never was able to identify the original kidnapper who stole her Stranger away. A couple of years before, her hometown newspaper, The Andover Townsman, published it. She assumes that a reader scanned it, without her byline, and started the whole distribution chain by e-mailing it to a friend who decided to share it with other cyber pals. And the saga continues to this day, the Stranger is still popping up in e-mails across the nation. Rose wishes she herself can achieve the same immortality. Meanwhile, she can reached by e-mail.

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If These Are Laugh Lines, Im Having Way Too Much FUN

By Rose Madeline Mula

If youve been waiting for another writer like Erma Bombeck to come along, wait no more. This hilariously funny and wonderfully wise book by Rose Mula is a must-read for all Ermas fans. Youll see yourself on every page. . . . Read this book on the beach, on a plane, in a bubble bath. Read it out loud at your next family reunion. But just be sure to read it if you need a laugh.                          

 --Mary McHugh, author of How to Ruin Your Marriage

What a joy! In this time of little humor Rose Mulas If These Are Laugh Lines, Im Having Way Too Much Fun looks at everyday events with a comic eye. It will make you laugh, as you probably have had the same experiences but without her refreshing slant.                                     --Joan Fontaine 

This delightful collection of humorous essays is loaded with lots of laugh lines while shedding light and lightness on a variety of everyday situations.  Rose helps us move from a grim and bear it mentality to a grin and share it outlook as she shares slices of life and laughter. If you want to improve your L.Q. (Laugh Quotient), this book is for you!

--Dr. Joel Goodman, director of The HUMOR Project, Saratoga Springs, New York,

author of Laffirmations: 1,001 Ways to Add Humor to Your Life and Work