Brave New World

I'm not quite sure at what point the average adult brain begins to find it difficult, no...impossible, to learn new things which, in the past, it would have been able to learn without effort. I have no idea when I crossed the imaginary boundry, but I did and unfortunately, I am now one of the people I could never imagine being when I watched my parents struggle to learn how to program their VCR.
My children become completely exasperated trying to teach me even the most basic computer skills. I don't blame them. I am exasperated myself. It just doesn't seem like it should be as hard as it seems to be. Even if I understand at the time how to do it, by the time I need to do it again I have forgotten how and we have to start all over again. Needless to say they get tired of this routine fairly quickly.
They work with the speed and ease of someone with innate knowledge. The other day Jacob was helping me do something and I just shook my head and said, "How do you know how to do that?" There must have been some midnight trianing sessions under the covers with a flashlight that I wasn't aware of.
In the effort to help market and promote "The Rhyme and Reason Series" my publicist told me the other day that I had to Twitter. "It's non-negotiable," she said.
I didn't even know what Twitter was until a couple of months ago and I swore on the spot I would never do something that seemed like just so much electronic clutter. I hate clutter. I am always getting rid of stuff so why would I want to add more to my life?
Besides, I am just getting used to Facebook and one big adjustment at a time at my age seems more than fair.
She wouldn't budge. "It's a tool," she said, "You have to take advantage of what people are using to communicate." Geeze, I thought. What's wrong with a good wall-mounted phone?
So now I Twitter. And I'm on Facebook. And I blog and e-mail and instead of feeling hip and cool and on the cutting edge, I just feel like I need a long nap.