An Unanswered Question

 

By G. E. Shuman

 

 

While sitting together in our living room the other evening, my barely-eight-year-old granddaughter Nahla asked me a somewhat telling question. She was playing with her iPhone at the time, (Yes, she has a phone but with limited screen time, is not allowed on social media, and uses the phone mostly to play games on.)

Whenever Nahla asks me a question, she always prefaces it with “Papa, I have a question.” That’s how I know a question is coming, I suppose.

So, “Papa, I have a question.”

“What is it?” I responded, as usual.

“Do you have any smart devices?”

“Um, well…” I stumbled over my words. “I guess so.” In all honesty, I wasn’t sure, and before that moment I didn’t know that Nahla even knew the word ‘devices.’ I do know our home is littered with electronics of every shape and size; I wasn’t and still am not sure what constitutes ‘smart’ when it comes to all the undead thinking things surrounding us these days.

“Do we have a smart TV?” I asked her, knowing that we get more channels of mind-numbing programs than you can shake a stick (or a remote) at. I asked her that because I didn’t know if our TV was smart. I know it is big, flat, and black. Does that count?

She responded, “Maybe,” never looking up from the phone.

At this point, while already knowing my granddaughter is smarter than me, I was beginning to wonder if some of the doorknobs were too.

“How about my laptops, or Alexa?” I offered. “Are they smart?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

It’s like someone my age is really supposed to know the answers to such questions. Turning seventy and retiring, (both for the last time,) and realizing how much time you may or may not have left on this planet is no incentive to learn how to control or be controlled by any more devices, smart or stupid. I do still want to learn, but please don’t try to get me to understand or operate many more new ‘things’ with screens and buttons and apps and pages of tiny-fonted instructions. (I hate those instructions.)

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m happy that my grandkids are all intelligent, capable young people who can run rings round me in the electronic-literacy realms of life. That knowledge will serve them well in our ever-advancing world. And it may or may not be too late for me to absorb much more of that stuff, but I do hope it is. I’d rather read a book and take a nap, preferably at the same time.

I never adequately answered Nahla’s question about smart devices. I only recently figured out my Keurig and the garage door opener. Still, at this point in my life, maybe some ignorance really is bliss.