« My Glasses | Home | An Obvious Compound Word »
September 11, 2006
An Enthusiastic Passenger of the Latest Bandwagon I'm Aboard
Find a mechanically sophisticated technological bandwagon (the computer and all the gadgets and programs that go with it, as opposed to, say, the pencil) and chances are good I was late getting on it. Moreover, when I did get on it, it was probably because someone else bought me a ticket, and I probably delayed using that ticket until it was about to expire.
A case in point: learning to drive. I didn't mind the idea of learning to drive, but I wasn't dying to start asking my parents for the keys, like most of my friends. I was perfectly happy to walk most places--we lived only two blocks from my high school--provided I didn't have to carry a lot of stuff. Plus, although I didn't realize it at the time, I was related to a bunch of bad drivers and had a skewed notion of how much anxiety was necessarily involved in operating a motor vehicle: I didn't realize that if you stayed calm, paid attention, drove the speed limit and weren't aggressive about trying to occupy the same exact area another vehicle was already in, you could often avoid accidents, horn-honking, being shouted at, and getting the finger.
I dutifully got my learner's permit at 15 years and seven months like I was supposed to, and my mother dutifully took me out for lessons. Let's just say that I preferred risking my life as the passenger of my big sister, who had crappy depth perception and no patience for on-coming traffic, to listening to my mother scream "Brake! Brake! Hit the damn brakes!" a full block before I approached an entirely deserted intersection in the nowhere beyond Lizard Bump (which is an actual place name, but not one with many inhabitants).
As a result I was several months past 16 before I finally got my license, not long before school let out. There was something going on in the summer that I would be expected to drive myself to, and it was necessary for me to be legal when doing so.
Then there was email. I loved (still love) actual letters, strokes of ink on real pieces of paper, and I wasn't interested in this ephemeral electronic nothing that other people could spy on. It wasn't until the summer of 1994, when the guy I was dating got annoyed that he couldn't send me email, set me down and taught me how to use the account provided for me by the university, that I realized email might have its virtues.
And that's the other thing about my approach to technological bandwagons: once I decide the time is right to climb up on one, once I find a way to adapt the technology to my specific needs, I often become an enthusiastic passenger, gushing to others on the wagon about how great the ride is, waving cheerfully to those we pass.
Driving wasn't like that, admittedly: distance permitting, I'd still rather walk. I don't have a phobia or anything, but truth be told, I don't really like sitting in a little metal container and then hurtling it down a stretch of asphalt while a bunch of other people in little metal containers are doing exactly the same thing.
But technologies that involve recording and relaying information are different, I am realizing.
I asked for a digital camera for Christmas because all the cool bloggers were using them. My mother gave me what I asked for, and my brother (who lives two doors down from my parents) charged the battery for me and showed me what the various function keys do. ("Mom must really like you," he said, admiring the camera's many spiffy features.) I brought it back home after Christmas, put it in a drawer, and left it there for eight months.
And then I thought, OK, it can't be that hard to use the damn thing, and there must be SOMETHING I really want to take a picture of.
Sure enough.
And now I love it! I plan to post a photo or two every week. In blogging terms at least, it seems that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, and though my allegiance is still primarily to those thousand (and ten thousand, and one hundred thousand) words, I don't have to renounce it in order to add photos.
Posted by holly at September 11, 2006 11:11 AM
I love my digital camera and find to take really great photos, if I just snap about 10,000, I get a good 20 or so. I put a link to some of my photos on my links list as well if you're bored.
Can't wait to see the photos. It was the opposite for me. I speak visually, and when my professor made me adds words, it was difficult at first. But now I'm getting more comfortable with the two together.
I love my Nikon Cool Pix. Nikons are especially good on closeups. With my camera I can take photos & crop & photoshop them for nice results. I'm no pro, but what I come up with makes me happy.
But it's also fun to use the cheesy little camera on my phone for some really amusing candid shots.