There’s an old joke that the older you get, the less you know.
I’m starting to realize it’s not so much a joke as an observation
in life.
There’s an old joke that the older you get, the less you know. I’m starting to realize it’s not so much a joke as an observation in life.
Every day the space between now and the day I arrived on this planet gets wider, but my knowledge base seems to shrink. It doesn’t help that technology continues to move along at warp speed.
When my kids were younger, I kept up with things like the latest in video games. At the school where I work, several students are very enthused about Playstation and Nintendo. They excitedly tell me how they spent the weekend defeating various levels of the game. I nod and smile, feeling all the while that they’re speaking to me in Greek. I have absolutely no clue what they’re saying. It doesn’t help matters when other 5 and 6-year-olds pipe in, adding their wisdom to the conversation.
And forget about computers. It was no help to me that my dad was one of the first software engineers in the state. He’s been gone for several years now and I’ve learned that kind of knowledge does not pass genetically from one generation to the next.
I’ve been using computers as word processors for a decade now. I’ve also set up two school libraries with a computer-based check-out system and card catalog, yet I’m the first to fumble when the computer glitches. With a few simple clicks, I’ve been known to erase months worth of work. Not totally ignorant, I have learned to use the “save” button on the computer, along with hard copies and back-up disks.
Even simple things like DVD players can trip me up. Last year my son gave me a DVD player for my birthday. I love the quality of the picture and watching the behind-the-scenes clips, yet I never seem to know what buttons to push. I’ve been known to watch pictures in French, German and Spanish. None of the movies I was watching were originally made in these languages, nor am I fluent in any of them. I just can’t seem to push the right buttons.
It doesn’t help that the average DVD remote contains about 50 different buttons, all with their own special function. My kids have learned if they’re going to watch a DVD with me to grab the remote before I get my hands on it.
Technology is confusing enough, world politics even more so. I’ve never been very politically minded. In all honesty, there is so much dishonesty, back-stabbing and payoffs in politics, I have a hard time getting interested. But then again, I was never very interested in the “popular” group in high school, which in my opinion is a toned-down version of today’s politicians.
Keeping up with world politics is made harder by simple geography. The names of many countries change on a weekly basis. I just read that Yugoslavia is no longer that. They’ve been breaking that country into pieces for many years no, and I guess there was one piece left which has just been given a new name.
I can’t help but wonder what happens to all the Yugoslavians now. When I lived in Germany, I worked and lived in the same building with a couple dozen Yugoslavians. Because of a name change, their country no longer exists.
The Internet may have put instant access to everything at our fingertips, but it hasn’t made me any smarter. For example, have you ever tried looking up a medical condition on the Internet? Wow, talk about information overload. You get everything from the Mayo Clinic version to the local witch doctor. Products for potential cures come from huge drug companies to the little guy in a Third World country trying to feed his family and goats. Suddenly it’s easy to understand why doctors keep information to a minimum. I’m usually more scared about a medical condition after I’ve done some Web surfing than before I turned on the computer.
When I was a kid (and dinosaurs walked the earth) I used to think my parents were way behind the times. Now I know for a fact they were. But I also have more empathy. Call it what you will – brain overload, memory loss or simply too much information, the name really doesn’t matter.
Though I continue to read, watch and learn, one thing is true: I’ll never know as much as my kids do, and one day, neither will they.
