I'm starting to regret giving my dad a cell phone

It's 2019, and my dad still mostly lives as if it's 1980. Though he's been slowly, slowly, trying to learn how to use a laptop, that's his only modern luxury. Seeing as how my dad is...well...my dad, with all the quirks involved in his personality, I decided to grant him an upgrade to the 1990s: a cellular phone. It's a bulky, old school flip phone, with nothing more than the ability to text and call. It arrived in the mail, and my dad excitedly opened the packaging as if it was Christmas. However, I underestimated the difficulties of flip phones, as apparently, they are a nightmare to people unfamiliar with them. These are the adventures of dad and his phone.

Dad: How does it work...?
Me: Okay, so you press the numbers, yeah? Then press the big green button.
Dad: What is a green!?
Me: Uhm...it's the one with the picture of a phone...
Dad: [holds RED power button]
Phone: [powers off]
Dad: Oh no...I killed him! Phone is the dead!

Dad: How do I stop the phone call?
Me: Just close it, and it hangs up for you.
Dad: [loudly slams phone shut]
Dad: Ooooh this is fun!
Dad: [proceeds to open and close his phone for fun]

A fateful week after obtaining his phone, he ran into his biggest trial yet. Alarms. Apparently, he keeps setting alarms. I don't know how, I don't know why. But he's set the loudest alarms on the face of the earth. I woke up at 6AM to see my dad start wrapping his phone in blankets, trying to muffle it. Then, he left it on my desk, waiting for me to fix it. Dad said "the phone has been crying for hour. Why won't it quiet? Please kill it!". 10 alarms had been set, on accident, to go off every 30 minutes. Even after I thought I disabled them all, it kept playing the alarm tune. For days, Dad would excitedly try to answer it, thinking it was a person. When he realized it was the alarm again, he would wrap it in a blanket, and leave it on my desk for me to fix. How. Why. Pls.

Dad: Help...I charge him all night, and he won't listen to me!
Me: What?
Dad: I made sure he would be happy with electric! But it won't do the calling!
Mom: What are you even saying?
Dad: Jeez, don't you people know the English? Poor phone is upset with me!
Me: [presses power button]
Dad: Phone friend alive again! Magic!!!

Dad: People tell me to do tax, they like the tax more than talking.
Me: What do you mean by tax?
Dad: You know! Your age people do it all the time, tic tac tac tac! Always pressing the phone!
Me: ...texts?
Dad: Yes! Tax!

Me: Alright, so you press the buttons, and they all have little letters on them. Don't be discouraged if it's difficult. Texting on these is really hard.
Dad: I will learn!
*two days later*
Uncle: Please, please, please tell your father to stop trying to text people. He keeps spamming me with things that don't make sense.
Uncle: Most of them are just the letter A repeated over and over...
Dad: I am taxing the good!

I thought a flip phone would be perfect for him to learn, but perhaps it's just too lofty of a goal. The concept of it just completely eludes my dad, but...at the very least...he's having fun with it.

Comments

I suspect that either:
  1. Your dad is suffering from mental issues. If true, that's actually sad. Prayer request?
  2. He is totally inept when it comes to technology. Not uncommon, actually.
  3. He comes from a time BEFORE 1980 (1880, perhaps?).
  4. He's a big ham and he's messing with you and everybody, pretending not to know when he actually does.
 
@HarvHouHacker Why not all 4? ;O; Dad being a technologically inept time traveler from 1880 who loves to ham minor things up because of a mental condition sounds totally plausible. In all seriousness, it's just that he's managed to avoid every technological advancement from the early 80s onward. He's quite sheltered, and he treats things we take for granted as if they're the most confusing yet magical thing on earth. (I had a blog prepared to talk about his advent of dealing with streaming TV rather than cable, though there wasn't really enough quips that he made to create a blog with.)

@alexander1970 I purchased my dad a new touchscreen phone recently, though he had more trouble with it than the flip phone. Now, he at least can dial people without issues, but he runs to get me whenever anything happens, from thinking low power messages mean it'll break, etc.
 
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Entertaining read. I, myself (well into my 50's) don't have a cellphone. It's not that I'm inept with new technologies. I can use computers (and fix their problems) efficiently, and I hacked numerous consoles over the years, thanks to sites like this one. Cellphones just really never appealed to me. For me, there is a time to goof around with electronic toys, but there's also a time to live your real life. Cellphones deprive you, to an extent, of the second option. That's why I never bothered with them.
 
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I know it's stereotypical, but Elders (if they haven't spent their lives with any type of hardware) are horrible with computers, Because my goodness.
My mom was trying to watch a movie for free on some dumb ass site. Opened a popup saying "your computer has been damaged call this number now" and so on.
she closes all the windows and then "CreepyNearnessSoftwareSetup" starts installing or something, She gets off saying "Okay Vic (me) fix it please."

I told her go onto "free movie" sites, because of viruses and what not, and she uses Edge -_- , i've told her to use Chrome because I have adblocker installed, and It's just generally better.

She's usually Tech Competent to understand most common sense things to do, She does online college, and only calls me over once in a while trying to find out how to do something....

Even still, She thinks Minecraft slows down the computer xD
 
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DeoNaught said:
Elders (if they haven't spent their lives with any type of hardware) are horrible with computers,
And not just elders, either. Just the other day, I was fixing a 15-year-old's computer who had browser notifications enabled from 5-6 shady sites and got bombarded with spam every couple of minutes. What's even worse, he cleared his notification shade one notification at a time.
He was a DJ by the way; very good with sound hardware. I can't believe how he can be so software-illiterate.
 
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Some old people are really good with computers though (even though they didn't have it as a kid)
An old friend was leaving pretty much all their stuff behind, and I got an all-in-one Desktop from him. I was really surprised to see everything tidied up. He mostly used it as a Writing computer, but everything was up to date, there was like two Virus defenders on there, Almost pristine machine. Only thing that was clean was the keyboard, had a bunch of bread crumbs and chips between the keys (not to an excess, but it bugged the hell out of me). He was Millitary, maybe that was why, but My sister is millitary, and she's a dumbass when it comes to computers (no offense to her, just not her forte)
 

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