It is a great myth of childhood that adults understand everything, or if not everything, then at least math, and if not math, then the news. Maybe somewhere this mythical adult really does exist; I for one cannot believe how often I operate, and in how many capacities, without a clue.
Some of this I blame on the internet, or if not the internet, then technology. (I don't really know the difference.) Crystallized in my memory is the very first time I ever got online. It was the '90s, it was dial-up, and I had an AOL account. There was the sound of dialing, and then a long buzzy tone. At last the web answered, and like magic, I latched onto the teat of the world.
It was cool at first. I had one email address, and so did the three other people I knew online. We wrote each other daily, often saying things like, "Isn't this cool? We're online!" We'd italicize "online."
And then everything fell apart. Suddenly I had four friends online, which was overwhelming enough, but then came spam, and then viruses, and then, perhaps worse than viruses, virus protection, which I never really knew if I had or not. As if spam and immunity weren't enough to worry about, along came Facebook with its own set of incomprehensible algorithms, though I didn't join right away because I was already drowning in a sea of confusion about a number of things, not the least of which was math and news.
And then, like a ghost ship in the night, smartphones suddenly loomed, along with a personal assistant named Siri, with whom I had a fight just last week. I was asking her questions, and she was answering them with varying levels of accuracy, which was fine as I'm not a stickler for facts; the problem was that, prior to each answer, she would say my name. (If I were emailing this to you, I would put, "say my name" in italics, to demonstrate my level of annoyance.)
There were a few reasons why I found her name-saying annoying. For one, I did not like her robotic-sounding pronunciation. In addition, I did not like that she always prefaced my name with "OK," as it seemed like forced informality. Lastly, I felt that Siri's repetitive name-saying was gratuitous. I read an article recently that said a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest sound in the human language, and I felt that Siri was trying, in some ill-advised mechanical way, to win me over (with "win me over" in italics).
So I told her to stop the hell saying my name, or else. "OK. Dana," she said. "What shall I call you instead?" She was completely unperturbed, which further annoyed me.
"Just call me Hey You," I said. Then I asked her how old Woody Harrelson is.
"Hey You," she said. "Woody Harrelson is 56."
Much better. Except that now somehow Google has my name as "Hey You" on all of my accounts, something I did not foresee.
There are other problems too, that I do not understand and cannot fix and so just hang there, cluttering up my life. There are the multiple email addresses I now have, some of which inexplicably feed into others and some of which do not, leaving a flotilla of emails I can't begin to corral or sort. Somewhere there is an email from a publishing company offering me a huge advance on my next book and from Woody Harrelson (who is the perfect age) asking me out on a date, but I'll never be able to prove it.
There are other things I am confused about as well, that have nothing to do with technology. I've never really understood how to make bread, broil salmon or poach eggs. I don't know the difference between a Dutch oven, a double boiler, a crockpot, a slow cooker and a pressure cooker. I do not know what to do with a cake pan whose floor falls away like a Gravitron, except to use it as a simile. And this is just the beginning. Don't get me started on the mystery of the two TV remotes or what might happen if I drive away from the house and leave the car's wireless key fob hanging in the door.
One night, driving home from a party, I mentioned to my husband how often I barrel through the darkness without the slightest idea what's ahead of me. He was understandably alarmed. But I think this is an apt description of adulthood. Most of us, if we will admit it, hurtle blindly through life, stopping occasionally to assert we know exactly where we're going.
Don't tell the children.
Dana Shavin's memoir, "The Body Tourist," is available locally at Star Line Books and Barnes & Noble, and at Amazon.com. Her website is danashavin.com. Email her at dana@danashavin.com. Follow her at on Facebook at Dana Shavin Writes.