My one and only niece plus my four grandchildren are brilliant at figuring out their techie toys. You know the ones I mean–the electronic notepads, laptops, iPods and cellphones that do everything except cook your dinner. Yep–all these and more.

Hubby and I usually hold our breaths if the TV or our computers begins to act erratically, finally blooming into a full-blown emergency where we have to call Telus, our service provider. It takes a wealth of time, patience and a big sack of snacks to finally break through to an actual living person who can correct the problem, from wherever he/she lives. It’s always a revelation that someone in Malaysia, Thailand or India can handle the problem.

I have what the salesman solemnly called the “senior” cellphone. I can call out and receive calls on the phone; take photos as it does have a decent camera and I recently discovered that I can text. However, if I return a text message, it takes forever as the alphabet  is similar to my push-button phone. In order to type a, b, c, it means a tap for “a,” two taps for “b” and 3 taps to get “c.”  I can see why spelling using short-cuts is a really, really good idea. AND, thank the stars, I rarely get any text messages unless it’s an advert from Rogers, my cellphone carrier or from my forgetful friend or my out-of-town cousin. My friend had recently taken the plunge and bought a Smartphone that did everything. She was only discovering a teensy bit of what it could actually do–texting was one of them.

Heading out to do my errands, I turned on my cellphone and stuffed it in my coat pocket. The cellphone immediately gave an ominous buzz and did a frantic jiggle, twitch and bounce in my pocket. “Oh no,” I groaned. Did this mean I had to get a new phone? Did the carrier finally realize I was still running on my old contract that had expired a number of years ago? Can I even get my basic phone fixed? I truly like my basic senior phone. Maybe I could rustle up a group of rabble-rousing, gray-powered citizens to rally for a     good cause. All these thoughts tumbled at warp speed from my brain.

Reluctantly I hauled the phone out to see what the problem was. It was my friend who forgot that I didn’t text. She had texted three frantic messages—bing, bing, bing—causing my quiet, peaceful senior cellphone to react hysterically. I checked the time and date. It had been sent 2-days ago—that was the last time I had turned on my phone.  The emergency was the loss of a pair of glasses. She had retraced her steps from all the shops, businesses and errands she had been doing two days ago. Hastily, I emailed from my computer,  that since she had checked all the obvious places—what about  all the not so obvious places like the trunk of her car, the freezer or the dog-house. After all, lost things are never where they’re supposed to be and often take to roaming to more exciting locales.

Success!  Not taking any chances that I wouldn’t immediately see her text, my friend phoned on her Smartphone. The missing glasses had been found neatly tucked inside a stack of clean, folded laundry.

Now my question is—if technology is so smart and there was a Smartphone involved, why can’t there be some sort of “dot” placed on the glasses and accessed through the GPS system on the Smartphone.  WHAA-AT?   There is no GPS locator on the Smartphone?  What about snacks?  What about coffee?  What about. . .

And those techie-mind whizzes wonder why I don ‘t have more techie toys—not in my house, Buster!