Touchy-feely

It's always wonderful when your kids buy you gifts.

"Hello! When I said sensitive to touch, I meant my new 'touch' phone is, NOT ME!"

The role reversal; the choking emotion – then, for some – the ‘Dear God’ moment.

See – there’s the feisty young Giver, who sees state-of-the-art gizmos as the Ultimate Gift; and then there’s the aging Givee who, quite often, is tech-phobic.

Usually, you muddle through somehow, but you know when it gets really tough?

When touch screens are involved.

Seriously – what’s with this stuff?

You only have to breathe on, or even near, these thingies to set them off.

And evidently yelling: “Oh, no, no, no...” at your phone, or jabbing frantically at it, does not affect unintentionally given commands. (You are now on various ‘Ignore’ lists, thanks to all those (mistake) calls.)

You sneeze – ‘It’ switches to ‘loudspeaker’.

You set it down a little hard – an irate relative on the still-sleeping side of the globe awakes.

“Just lock it,” your kids fume.

You did...but it cunningly unlocked itself.

“ ‘It’ hates me,” you whine.

“This isn’t just looking a gift horse in the mouth; this is kicking it in its teeth,” your child mumbles, making you feel worse than old frozen idli.

Great – now both humans and machines are equally touchy.

Being Gen-Clueless is not easy.