Granny, it’s called a camera.

In which the author reveals conflicting feelings about technology.

     As a pediatric home care nurse it was my job to learn about a patient who I might be working with and as I met the young boy and his family, I encountered some familiar and not-so-familiar equipment.

     “This is Isaiah’s * oxygen concentrator”, his regular nurse told me. No problem, I thought, I have lots of experience with those, how to regulate them, clean the filters and trouble shoot. Next was his attached humidifier, no big deal. He also had a Shiley trach , of the sort that I have spent many hours teaching families how to maintain. Further, he had a Mic-key button for tube feeding, easy peasy . Moving on, I saw he had a low air loss alternating pressure support system, also known as a “bed”, that I have learned about in seminars on bed sore prevention. Rounding out his equipment was a pulse oximeter, nebulizer and  an old- school, non-digital feeding pump that I could operate in my sleep, and may very well have done just that while working nights years ago.

      Then came an alarming turn of events as I was informed:  “And this is Isaiah’s MP3 player”. Uh, oh.  If this had been a cheesy T.V. show you would have heard an old 33 scratching to a halt. MP3? It might as well have been an M16 for all I knew.  Did this have something to do with those i-pod thingies?  I was told not to worry, if anything needed to be done with it the family would send in one of the toddler siblings to assist me.  Although they did hire me to care for Isaiah, they continue to question my ability to operate a T.V. remote control or window fan.

     Clearly, I have issues with non-essential technology.  I simply do not know how people keep up with what I consider to be, at best, expensive toys, and at worst, status symbols.  Don’t   people have rent to pay and kids to feed? How can they afford all these “I” things? It is not that I am opposed to them, (except for the facts that they are made of non-biodegradable materials, shipped here contributing to atmospheric carbon build-up and that the Chinese are paid slave wages while displacing American workers), I just can’t figure out why people feel they need them.

     One time my friend Jacemine called me in severe physical distress and I hurried over to her house. I quickly determined she needed an ambulance and she pointed weakly to what she called a phone.  It was a shiny, rectangular object with no buttons or dials or anything. Was it an I-phone or cell phone or what?  Even though she could barely lift her head I had to have her call 911. .  She’s okay now and will never, ever, make tea out of unidentified leaves.

     My good friend is a quadriplegic and for the purpose of my blog would like to be identified as “ Rick Castle”. I was attempting to turn off his Nook reader and was so concerned that the battery not run down that I ended up erasing Rick’s e-book completely, and he had to order a new one. Good job, Darcy!  I am no longer allowed to touch Rick’s Nook.

     My 7 year old grandson is a budding creative genius who has vast artistic potential. I am not the only one who believes this. His other grandmother, Marie, concurs with my assessment. Once when he was 5, he was “working” with a thing that sort of looked like a cell phone but was taking moving pictures. Some phones take pictures, right? So I asked him if that was a cell phone. In a very serious tone he declared, “Granny, it’s called a camera”.

     So far I had led a family to believe I could not operate a 3 speed fan, endangered my friend’s life (or at least her electrolyte balance) with my inability to use a phone, cost Rick some money for an e-book and caused my grandson to think that I had never heard of a camera.  Clearly it is time for me to join the 20th Century and learn some technology.  Maybe the encyclopedia has some answers for me.   

P.S.  The writer has just been informed that it is the twenty-first Century and regrets the error.

* Not his real name.