Some change I can handle; some I can’t. Here I am, after all, blogging on the Internet, pounding away on the keyboard of a laptop computer, offering up my words to unseen recipients (not too many… but some). On the other hand, I do not own a cell phone, I take photos with a camera, I speak standard English without, like, throwing in extraneous words and stuff, and I mourn the passing of the time when Sinatra could sing about feeling gay without worrying about being thought queer (it’s the lexicological issue that bothers me, not the sexual, if you’re wondering).
During her last years, my mother used to listen to books on disc. She called it “reading,” which I thought was a bit of a stretch but, hey, at least she was doing it. She gave me several books on disc and I tried listening to them but couldn’t get into it. I felt as if I wasn’t engaging the proper senses somehow, it was too audio and not enough visual.
Now my daughter has given me a Kindle. I bought Bleak House by Dickens for my initial foray into paperless reading; it miraculously found its way through cyberspace from Amazon.com to my little handheld device. I turned the pages by hitting a button on the side. It was not the positive experience I had hoped it would be. I went to the library and checked out a copy of Bleak House.
I plead guilty to being old and set in my ways. Those of you who are young or more progressive than me may indict me if you must and I will stand in the dock wearing a broad smirk and say to the judge, “Kindle schmindle!”
p>