Dear Young People of Planet Earth,

You know who you are. In fact, unfortunately, if you are reading this, you are probably NOT who I am talking about. I mean the young people who are perpetually busy on their laptops, iPhones, gaming systems, and listening to dubstep remixes and mashups when they are not working on their remarkable abs or doing yoga/pilates. Do you and your cohort of technophiles with oversized texting thumbs have ANY idea how difficult it is for older people to stay current with the rapid pace of technological change and innovation? It’s exhausting and humiliating. Cant we just take a break for a year or two? Could I just call a short “time out” until I catch up with all the mobile apps, urban dictionary terms, and acronyms for everything you hipsters and tech nerds take for granted?

If it wasn’t for South Park and my sons I wouldn’t know anything. It’s irritating waking up and seeing a new term online or major change in how coffee is made and cars turn on that AGAIN leaves me and my generation in the dust. You know that South African guy, the double amputee running in the London Olympics? Everyone is happy for him and feels proud of his accomplishment. So do I. Now imagine him without his blade runner prosthetic legs and feet. That’s how I feel technologically….except minus hands (and thumb dexterity) too. Metaphorically speaking I feel stuck at the starting line while everyone else breaks out of the blocks with tremendous speed, agility and endurance. I’m sitting there at the starting line on my technological stumps, a technological torso and/or tortoise in a 400 meter race to the future….of everything.

Ok, I admit it. I put a lot of you down over the years for being stupid about history, current events, literature, and DIY knowledge such as how to fix a broken toilet, about which you dont have a frickin’ clue. I was just trying to make myself feel better because I have no idea what an “open source” is, what quantum computing is about, or what these information data “clouds” are going to do for everybody. I just hope it doesn’t rain all weekend so that I can rake my yard. I know, you dont know what a rake is either. It’s the weird device that came before the blower that you also dont use because you are too busy taking over the world and sharing your files instantly…with everybody (like in the Verizon commercial). I have a file cabinet. I guess that’s different. PS What the hell is a “mashup”?