Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

Sometimes I think that I just wasn’t cut out for the 21st century, at least not all the technological leaps and bounds being foisted on us. And I’m not talking about such mysteries as “Blue Tooth” and “iphones,” which, no doubt, will forever remain beyond my ken.

But last month when I stayed with my son and daughter-in-law to celebrate my newest grandchild, precious Micaela’s first birthday, I ran into a stonewall trying to watch television. First off, television is to be watched in the media room, a rather grand space only slightly smaller than the mezzanine in the Radio City Music Hall, but with a larger screen.

We had to wait for my daughter-in-law to finish putting the baby to bed, because we were slated to watch a movie and she was the only one in the house able to program the thingamajig in the media closet to start the film.

Okay, I could live with that and the humongous screen was rather overwhelming at first, but we got used to seeing movie characters (literally) larger than life. Then when the movie was over, I asked to stay up for the late news; something of a habit I got into during WWII when Edward R. Murrow reported from London. But my son said he and Melissa, his beautiful and caring wife had to be up early the next day (they both work), so no news tonight.

“Oh, no problem children,” I said. “I’ll turn off the set, you can go to bed.”

“Dad, you don’t understand,” my son explained. “This is not just a ‘set.’ It has to be turned off in a certain sequence – the screen, the surround sound and the media enabler, otherwise we’ll never get it to work tomorrow and we’ll have to call in our engineer.

“You got to be kidding me! Can’t I just pull out a plug somewhere?”

“No, Dad,” my son said, as he opened the door to the media control panel room, which contained more wires and blinking lights the space control center in Houston that brought Tom Hanks home. “You want to tackle this?”

“Well, on second thought – not really. I’ll just have a glass of warm milk and go to bed.” ?