Grandma steadfastly insisted that the technology she had as a young woman was good enough. She never used a PC, never used an ATM. She’d watch TV, but never had cable. The VCR, and then the DVD player we bought her only were used when family was visiting. When she was about 80 and moved, she kicked up a fuss until my uncle found a proper corded phone for her to use. She would, occasionally, use her 1980’s-era microwave, but only when cooking for all 20+ relatives.
The only concession she ever really made was - completely bafflingly - a digital photo frame. A couple cousins and I loaded one up with tons of pictures of us and the great-grandkids. She was at first confused. Then, she made us sit down and show her how a digital camera worked, and how you put the photos on the frame, and after that she accepted it. She didn’t go out and buy a digital camera or anything, just accepted the frame once she understood the process behind it.
She wasn’t anti-technology, she just honestly seemed to believe that things had been good enough in the past, so she wanted no part of this modern nonsense.
Not that old. Chester Weger is only 75. But a couple years back my wife was warning a daughter before she went to Starved Rock. I had to butt in and say that Weger had just been denied parole and was unlikely to be a problem.
It can. All three devices draw a lot of power and can push the breaker over the edge. However, if your house is not like mine and was not wired by chimps, all three devices are unlikely to be on the same circuit.
Not a relative, but:
If you drive a car barefoot, you can be arrested. ?!?
My father would unplug everything in the house before leaving on vacation except for the refrigerator. Especially clocks. I got in much trouble for suggesting that if the kitchen clock was going to start a fire, it would be better if it did so while we were gone.
My mother, like her mother, always talks about supposed nutritional deficiencies in my diet like she’s a doctor even though she’s the one with a nutrition-related disease. Physician, heal thyself. My grandmother would make me drive over and fill the gas tank if the price dropped 2 cents although the unnecessary drive over would cancel any savings. Whenever I’ve talked about moving to California, she says that it’s too expensive because of some special state tax, ignoring that millions of people manage to live there including a relative that moved there recently. When I was draft age, my mother would express concern that I wouldn’t hack it in the army because I didn’t “weigh enough”, or if I didn’t do a chore as assigned, ignoring that there’s no draft. My mother freely discusses her bowels, carbunkles and such too.
They believed vampires were real and dangerous supernatural entities and had lots of old-country beliefs surrounding what should be done to prevent them. The most amusing (and embarrassing when I was younger) ones involved avoiding the spread of vampirism in animals or other objects. For example, pumpkins were never allowed to be left sitting close together and were frequently examined for red “blood spot” marks (a naturally occurring red discoloration that occurs in some pumpkins). Pumpkins found with “blood spots” had to be boiled then burned.
In some locations, driving “without appropriate shoes” (which includes barefoot) can get you fined. If you don’t have shoes the cop considers appropriate, he can ban you from driving. If you get stupid, it can get you arrested.
My mother will freely give you advice on all of your bowel-related ailments. In the middle of a crowded restaurant. Whether you have any such ailments or not. (She has them. You are related. Therefore, you have them, or will soon.)
She loves all things medical. Whatever disease has been on TV lately, suddenly everyone around her has all the symptoms. Especially the people she’s mad at. If you are an ounce overweight, you must be diabetic. If you are an ounce underweight, you must be anorexic. Or a drug addict. Or both. Bipolar disorder is her favorite diagnosis. If you do something she doesn’t like, you must be manic. If you don’t do what she wants, you must be depressed.
She gets a frightening amount of her medical information from late-night talk radio. I am fairly certain that she knows the Bigfoot and UFO experts are cranks. I don’t know why she thinks the quacks peddling diet books are any more trustworthy.
She is diabetic, and has high blood pressure. She has spent most of her life searching for some magical diet that will cure all her ills. Lately, she has jumped onto the vegetarian bandwagon. And the gluten-free bandwagon. And the anti-GMO bandwagon. (I will admit, her blood sugar has been more stable since she went veggie. But none of her doctors has ever even mentioned Celiac disease. She gave up gluten because a friend of a friend recommended it. And she complains of bowel problems just as often now, as she did before.)
She grew up in a small town in the Great Depression. She has kind of a social inferiority complex. She desperately wants the neighbors to think she’s an aristocrat. But, being a child of the Depression, she wants to look like an aristocrat as cheaply as possible. Which generally doesn’t work. Have you ever seen the show Keeping Up Appearances? That is my parents, and most of their friends and relatives.
Mom has always hired a maid to clean the house every couple of weeks. In the lean years, no matter how desperate Dad’s finances, Mom was never willing to do without a housekeeper. She usually works harder to prepare the house for the maid, than she ever asks the maid to do. As far as I can tell, the maid’s main purpose is to enable Mom to gossip about The Help with her friends.
My dad grew up in de great Dutch harbour city of Rotterdam. He used to warn me not to get too close to any ship that was moored down by cables. A bobbing ship, he said, could put enormous pressure on those huge cables, stretching the cables to their breaking point. And when such a cable would break, the broken ends could lash out with enormous force, like a gigantic whip gone berserk. And if I happened to be in its path, it would slice right through me.
I don’t if there’s any truth to that, but it’s such a vivid image, no? I bet his parents used to give him the same warning.
My grandma, like many others in this thread, was also raised in the bowel era. When I was a kid and stayed with her, she used to inquire after a bathroom visit if I had made a number one or just a number two. I found it embarrassing even then.
That is not that strange. About two years ago I went to a fruit store and bought a dozen eggs. I looked for cracked ones and there were only eleven in the container. I told the store owner and he just took one out of another container and left it on the shelf.
A cable parting under load is a fearsome thing and can indeed cut a man in two. The odds on it happening on any given day to any particular mooring line is pretty minimal though. And much less so with modern cables vice the WWII and before era stuff.
This is my father (in his eighties now). He’s never had a mobile phone, or an email address (let alone a Facebook page), or used a computer. When I was growing up, we had rotary phones long past the time when the rest of the world had gone to touch-tone phones. He doesn’t have a DVD player, and never had a VCR (which is silly, because he loves movies). He got cable only so he could get more baseball games (he loves baseball). He is a voracious reader, and really is running out of room in his home for books, but will never get a Kindle (or equivalent).
He isn’t anti-technology, really. He knows that everyone else in the world has computers and email and mobile phones, and is completely aware that those are useful things. He doesn’t insist that the technology he had when he was younger is good enough, he just says it’s good enough for him. He doesn’t mind that I added internet access to his cable service at his home and set up a wireless router so that his (now adult) children and their spouses and children could use their various devices (tablets, smartphones, laptops) when they visit.
He just knows what works for him, and is fine with that. He knows how to use what he needs to use, and isn’t interested in the rest.
One more thought. My late grandmother (the mother of the above-mentioned father) believed in spontaneous generation. That is, if you left, say, some meat around long enough for it to begin to spoil and rot, maggots or other tiny insects would spontaneously generate in the decomposing material.
I have this problem in my kitchen. I discovered you can’t run the dishwasher and the microwave (or any other high wattage device on the same circuit) at the same time. And the circuit breaker is outside on the front of the house. Needless to say, I haven’t made that same mistake again.
Yes, I could plug the microwave in elsewhere, but the place I have it now is the most convenient place to put it. I just plan to run the dishwasher at a time other than when I’m preparing a meal.
My elderlies weren’t too full of cringeworthy stuff.
My grandfather had been a real ladies’ man in his time and had become a charming courtly old sort with an intriguing accent. Who just loved to chat up the clerk or waitstaff in any store or restaurant. As a bustling young 10-year old on a mission, this schmoozing about irrelevancies used to bug me a LOT!!! Get in, do your business, and get out. FAST!!!
I’ve started doing the same thing myself now. What’s all the rush?
OTOH, my wife’s aged Mom (89 & going strong) is still living in the 1880s despite the fact she was born about 50 years later. I hear more amazing theories about how to store vegetables in a hole in the ground to keep them cool in the summer. She’s not reminiscing about how she used to do it; she’s providing advice on what we should do now. Fridges are too precious to use for storing veggies.
She has lots of fascinating theories about all the things women can’t or shouldn’t do. Which driver her daughter / my wife batty. etc. But she’s sweet & we’re glad she’s still around.
I’m posting from a hospital where I’ve visiting my wife who’s an inpatient. Her Mom, introduced two posts above, is also visiting this afternoon.
She just told us about how Important it was to bring a nice housecoat whenever you check into a hospital. Going for a walk around the halls in the standard hospital gown Simply Wasn’t Done. One simply Had to wear a nice housecoat in case you met anyone you knew.
She was a big city girl, so it’s not like everyone in the hospital, staff & patients, would all be small-town neighbors.
This may be true but FTR the only state that explicitly bans barefoot driving is Alabama–and even there the law only applies to motorcycles.
I’m having trouble finding a single really authoritative-looking cite, but googling pulls up countless recently-written “FAQ” type articles, many of which themselves cite back to the AAA Digest of Motor Laws. (This source exists online but not in a searchable form.)
