Anyone who knows me knows of my disdain for new technology. My sons call me a “dinosaur,” my friends call me “technologically challenged,” and my wife says I’m simply “bull-headed” — but at my age, I doubt my attitude is going to change.

It’s not that I don’t understand or appreciate the conveniences and efficiencies that modern technology have afforded us. I use the computer and internet every day to find information and communicate with others; I have a smartphone that I use to text, email and keep detailed records of my cow herd — and sometimes, I even use it to make a telephone call. Heck, I surprise most of my farmer-friends when I tell them I have GPS installed in my tractor. You see, I use a lot of technology; I just don’t like it … and now, my worst fear has been realized: New technology is dangerous!

One of my coffee-drinking buddies (who is almost 20 years older than me — so he’s really old) traded in his flip phone for his very first smartphone. His grandchildren shamed him into the trade and promised to transfer all his contacts and information from his old phone, plus teach him how to operate the new device. Every morning for the first few weeks, he would ask me how to do something on the new phone, since his grandkids were either at work or in school. I became his go-to guy for tech questions. How sad is it when Jerry Crownover becomes your go-to guy for technology?

What’s that voice?
A couple of weeks ago, my friend broke his smartphone. When he went to purchase a new one, he went all in and bought a top-of-the-line, ultrasmart phone. This phone has all the bells and whistles and is way above my pay grade. Again, his grandchildren were happy to transfer everything.

Life was good, until … my buddy was in his shop one Saturday morning, working on his old truck for which he had just replaced the engine. As he was trying to reconnect the wires to the alternator, he had to lean over into the engine compartment from the top of a small stepladder. While he was trying to thread three wires through a plastic tube, he was encountering problems that he described as “trying to stick a wet noodle up a wildcat’s rear end.” After the third unsuccessful attempt, he began to talk to the wires by saying, in a not-so-quiet voice, “Get in there, you @#$%&*!”

Thinking he was alone, my friend was shocked to hear a feminine voice calmly say, “Now, there’s no reason to use that kind of language.”

Surprised beyond description, my friend quickly raised his head — and banged it on the open hood of the truck. Losing consciousness for a second, he fell off the stepladder onto the hard concrete floor of the shop, spraining his wrist as he landed.

Evidently, the grandkids figured their PawPaw would probably want the capability that allows a conversation between the owner of the phone and the lady computer inside the phone, and he had, unknowingly, said some semblance of her name when he was ranting over the side of the fender. He had the kids deactivate that function the next day.

New technology is dangerous!

Crownover writes from Missouri.