By Lisa Scottoline
I’m not old, but I’m getting older.
I know this because of technology.
Meanwhile, where do I even begin with the story?
Let’s start with the time a few months ago, when I trip over a dog gate, go flying, and can’t walk.
I’ve been hobbling around since then.
Seriously, I’m bent over like the old witch in Snow White. Plus I have stringy gray hair and a big nose.
All I need is the carbuncle.
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
Check.
But not the point herein.
I hobble around for about three weeks, barely able to straighten up, much less sit or drive, and so I finally get my butt to an orthopedist, who takes an MRI and tells me that I have a labral tear in my hip.
At first I thought I heard him wrong.
I didn’t think my labral was in my hip.
I got it mixed up with another body part, which should give you an idea of how good I was at sex.
Kind of not very.
But honestly, who cares anyway?
I’m great at writing!
Anyway, it turns out that a labral tear is a tear in the ligament that’s somewhere in your hip joint, and when I leave the doctor’s office, he gives me a DVD of my MRI.
Like a party favor for the middle-aged.
I take it home, and the first thing I want to do is look at my MRI.
Which is when I realized that I don’t have a DVD player in any of my computers.
What?
I don’t even know when that happened.
I seem to remember that I got new computers a year or so ago, because I like to have a nice big screen. And I don’t mind spending the money, because all I do all day is stare at a computer, and the least I can do is have a nice one. But I never really noticed that they didn’t have a slot for a DVD player.
So I went over to my big TV, figuring that I could watch my MRI on TV, like a medical reality show, maybe one called, YOUR LABRAL ISN’T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS
I managed to locate my DVD player underneath the TV, but it needed to be hooked up, since I am addicted to Netflix and haven’t watched a real DVD in a long time. It took me a full hour of struggling to hook it up, and even then, I couldn’t get it to work.
Which is when it struck me.
I am so ancient that I have lived through several stages of technology, like the Jurassic and Pleistocene era of dinosaurs.
I remember when there were VHS tapes because I still have them.
I remember when there were camcorders because I filmed Francesca when she was a baby, plus static scenes of my feet, with me saying, “Is this thing on or off?”
Now I have lived through DVDs, which sucks, because I have an entire set of operas in DVD that I was saving to watch in my retirement, and by the time I retire, operas will be transported telepathically into your brain.
Plus I paid to have those camcorder tapes of Francesca transferred onto DVD’s, and now there’s no such thing as DVD players.
So you’re getting a fairly complete picture of what life is like as me, which I’m hoping is like life as you, too.
Who here remembers actual records?
I do.
Who remembers little 33’s?
I do.
Who remembers cassette tapes?
I do.
How about trying to rewind them and having them unspool out of the slot like brown tinsel?
I know. Me too.
So there you have it. Many of us live a life measured in obsolete technological stages.
It’s enough to make your hip hurt.
Copyright © 2017 Lisa Scottoline