TECHNOLOSER

See those keys? The keys, just to the left, on the keyboard?

THAT keyboard is what is familiar to me. That's what I grew up with, know how to do, and that is what is evidently creating in me a horribly aged and inept feeling that keeps lingering close by.

I have a cell phone, and I even know how to text, much to the amusement of my children's friends whose parents are apparently not quite so hip.

The other day, in all of my smug, techno-coolness, I was ripping off the beginning of what was to be a very long, very funny, email to my daughter. I wasn't looking at the keys because I was so confident in what I was doing - it's all in the counting of the keys, I told myself, tap, tap, tap on the "7" key gives me an 'r', one more tap is the 's'. Most letters I use, I have come to realize are three taps on different keys, I use a lot of 'r's, i's, o's, and c's. Who knows why? All this to just say, that my hip-mom, techno-coolness world came crumbling down like ... hmmm. .... like what?......I should be good at the adjectives here, ... came crumbling down like .......like leaves falling in an autumnal breeze? No, too slow and lingering. Like water droplets off a shaking dog? No. That's too wet and dog-smelly. Maybe it's just as simple as a house of cards, crashing down quickly in a mille-instant. Yes, that's probably it. All at once I looked down at my phone because some letter didn't feel right..... what did I see? Two and a half lines of jibberish. In less than one tenth of a breath, my self-appointed coolness was gone. I felt really silly dumb. I had just wasted probably three minutes getting thumb cramps and probably signing up for early hand arthiritis, for what? Nothing. All at once I wished my daughter was there becasue she would have cracked up, and glad that she wasn't at the same time because I would never live it down and it would have been future fodder for all family gatherings to come. I couldn't tell you now what the funny story even was. And it was a good one, too!
And so, uncool, I'll go back to what I know - showing what I've been working on the last few days and trying to figure out how to get my voice and my art, out to the world.

Kate