We live in a pretty awesome time where technologies are changing rapidly and for the most part, for the better, in my opinion. I am one of the lucky ones who can still remember black and white TV and a time before the Internet. But at 54.85 years pf age. I fear that there may come a time when technology passes me and I won’t be able to keep up. I remember vividly when it happened to my dad with something as simple as the TV remote.

Now I for one was thrilled when the TV remote was invented. That meant that I had lost a job as “I” was the TV remote for my dad when I was a kid. Drove me crazy. He would tap on the wall between the living room and my bedroom to signal he needed me. I can still hear him say, “Marc, put that TV on channel 9 for me.” I can still feel the anger sharks swimming as I would trudge from my room to the living room and take those 10 steps from him to the TV and change his channel. Today, I’m almost laughing out loud at the memory of it and thinking how much fun my dad must have had with me doing that. As I’m writing this, I’m sure he’s looking down from heaven and having a good laugh too.

When I left college and got my first real job in 1981, I was hired as receptionist at Texas International Company in Oklahoma City. The first week of that job they sent me to a week-long class to learn how to operate the “word processing machine”. You mean I don’t have to type on an IBM Selectric typewriter. I was in heaven and this word processing machine system, was awesome! I always loved to type, but this was like a dream!

In 1984 I found myself in Clovis, New Mexico and by 1987 I had worked my way into a civil service job with the Public Affairs office with the 27^th Tactical Fighter Wing. That was an exciting job. We had a red phone in our office, yes a RED phone and no it was not the bat phone and no it was not a direct line the president. But if something bad happened or a plane went down, that phone would ring. It rang a few times while I was there. In that office I had a computer and the new word-processing system on that computer was Wordstar. Remember that? Again, I love to type and that system was amazing.   I had never had a class in Wordstar so everything I learned I taught myself and everyone around me. It just came easy to me and I picked it up very quickly. Still loving technology.

In 1991 my kids and I moved back to Oklahoma and within a few weeks I had landed a job at Exchange National Bank as their Word Processor. There was a big word processing machine in my office but the task was to get everything off the word processor onto Wordstar. You know how you had to do that? RETYPE EVERYTHING! Now that was a job and a half. I had to start by printing every document off of that word processor, let the offices who originated it decide if I needed to retype it, then retype it if needed. Whew. If you needed a document typed or a letter to go out, I did it.

In 1996 I took the job that I have now as the secretary to the superintendent for our local school system. Now I use the term “secretary” very loosely. That is what my official job description says, but I am way more than a secretary. For many years I have considered myself as an administrative assistant. Sounds better doesn’t it. And now, as I will be celebrating 18 years on this job on November 11, I consider myself an executive assistant and quite honestly, also the communications coordinator. But that’s another story for another time. Back to technology.

I now have this new job with a computer on my desk and something called the Internet. I had heard of it but had no experience with it. What was I supposed to do with it? Well I’ll tell you, initially there was nothing to do with it that related to my work. But it was fun to go there and do a little exploring. And honestly, I can’t even remember what I was looking at on it. It was also somewhere about this time that I got my first cell phone and my daughter got a cell phone. Crazy huh? Half the time my cell phone was in my purse but never turned on. Wasn’t sure why I had this phone, but I had it. My daughter used to get so angry at me. “Mother, why do you have a phone if you are not going to turn it on. I’ve been trying to call you.” Today, the phone never gets turned off and is with me at every turn and people can reach me 24/7. I’m not sure that is a good thing.

My job now REQUIRES me to do lots of work on the Internet and if you are in education, you know what I mean. Heck, if you are alive and breathing and working in an office, you know what I mean. Our student management system is online. Look up a student, go online. When we need to do an “all call” to parents or staff, it’s online. Research anything, online. File our state and federal reports, online. EMAIL, online. Staff and student push notifications, online. All of my files that are held on a network drive for security purposes, online. Know what happens when the Internet goes down in my office? A lot of nothing can go on.

Keith and I have been in our new house about four months now and it is a bit of technology mastery. First off, we have an alarm system which we can turn on and off from our phones. Secondly, you can open the garage door from our phones. [Or you can close the garage door from anywhere in the world when your son forgets to close it when he is house sitting.] We can turn on the sound system on our phones. Make the volume higher or lower, change a channel … Again, no internet access, none of that works. Last week our neighborhood lost power and we had to use a key to get in the front door. Can you imagine?

We can turn our fireplaces on with a remote. Did you hear that Daddy, I have a remove for the TVs and the fireplaces…? We have not figured out how to do the laundry or mow the yard with technology yet, but hey we can vacuum the floor with a great little piece of technology, Ruby the Roomba. She does a great job and I highly recommend her. I have a new car coming in the next few weeks and it has a technology package. Can hardly wait to see what all that entails.

My newest little piece of technology was my phone upgrade to the new iPhone 6 Plus from the iPhone 5. OMG it is huge and my 54 year old eyes and fingers love it. Remember when the goal was to get the smallest little phone you could? Well now I need something I can see. Plus back when I got my first cell phone, that’s all it was, a phone. It has only been in recent years when I bit the bullet and joined the iPhone family that I got the Internet on my phone. Again, how did I live without it? Checking my emails thousands of times a day, checking in with Facebook, playing Words with Friends with Loni and Keith, shopping from my phone. And when we travel, the GPS feature is priceless. I can’t imagine what I would do without my phone. So last Saturday, my 6 Plus arrives unannounced at my doorstep and it took me two days to get it set up. Remember what I said about technology passing me? ITunes refused to back up my iPhone 5 so the transfer of my stuff out of ITunes was not what it should have been and then I have been battling my email. Error messages about how it can’t do this or that. Spent a little time on the phone with Cable One, which didn’t help me. But I am proud to say that I solved my Cable One email issue all by myself, even with this little brain tumor and I used a co-workers little bitty tiny IPhone 4 to solve my work email issues. Hey, I’ve still got it, for now.

In less than two weeks technology will play a major role in letting all my friends know how I did with this surgery thing. I have given my daughter the list of peeps to notify and she will be doing text messaging for me. Another thing that I thought was stupid when it came out, but now I cannot live without. So I will continue to enjoy this awesome world of technology for as long as I can and hope that when the day comes that it passes me, I won’t know it.