How I wish you all could meet my 86-year-old mom-in-law. She’s amazing. I think if she were young in the world today, she would be a computer programmer. But she also still has the traditional homey gifts of cooking and sewing, etc. For me that’s an either/or. I can rock a computer…but sewing? Not so much. And one of my husband’s favorite lines is “Chrissie….back away from the kitchen….” (said in love, I swear, so I take no offense).
The thing is, in past years, she hasn’t realized how amazing she is or how technical she is.
This kind of blows my mind since she was a Brooklyn phone operator who had to look things up super fast to connect people. Tech is in her blood, yet she thinks she isn’t great at it.
But recently this is changing. Now that we are forced to do more at home due to the stay-at-home orders as the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps the nation, she’s realizing the practicality of online banking (yes, you can even do it on a Sunday 🙂 ) and of getting books to read from an online library. Church is great on Zoom and one can fill in a census and talk with friends all on the same device. We can even get our groceries online. Amazing. It’s clicking like it never clicked before, and it’s really fun to watch the confidence grow.
As I work in customer support, it surprises me how many people come in saying that they are old. I’m always quick to remind them that the inventor of the World Wide Web was born in 1955. That’s not terribly young. I wish older people would give themselves more credit and realize how much knowledge they have and how much they have to offer the world.