Chirp

My dad finally got a cell phone yesterday. He is a sports writer, so he follows teams to the four corners of the planet at all times of day. You'd think with the propensity for potential problems, he would have been one of the first to test out cell phones when they first became mainstream. That would require him to learn new things. He's one of those folks that is perpetually behind the times.

My stepmom thought it would be a good idea to get him one after he had to use mine on numerous instances, hers on many many instances, and pay phones anytime he could actually find them.

I'm so proud of him. He actually learned how to use it too. He only hung up on me once, dropped it twice, called the wrong number three times, and took only four attempts to memorize his new number. Now if we could get him to actually turn it on and keep it with him like most other people do, we'd really be getting somewhere.

I've forgotten my phone on occasion, but usually only one day a month. And I blame that on my early mornings. I'm just not up that early. I usually don't get enough sleep because I'm out so late.

I went out late on Saturday and had a similar behind the times experience with my Mom. Luckily she is much further ahead of the technological curve than my dad. She missed her calling as a mechanical engineer. She's very intelligent when it comes to figuring things out like that. I was in a bind and hoped she could look something up online for me as I wasn't near a computer.

I explained the SEPTA website to her (yes, my favorite foe SEPTA) and asked if she could look up travel times for several routes so that I could plan accordingly. I carefully walked her through the sequence of events. She telephoned me back a few minutes later once she had the opportunity to look everything up. She tried so hard, and did well. She found the Schedule for the R8 Correctly. It is pictured below.

Then it fell apart. She misread the part of the table I highlighted and told me that the train left Chestnut Hill West at 9:46 and arrived at Market East at 9:20. Something sound funny with that? I told her not to read from right to left--we're not in Asia. So we figured that out and she Read the correct times to me. She then moved the R7 with a new found knowledge in hand. She proceeded to read it wrong again and informed me that the 15 mile trek was accomplished in a lightening 11 minutes. This doesn't sound odd, until you realize that we had 10 one minute stops to make. Last time I checked, SEPTA does not yet offer an Acela.

I have a dad that can't use the telephone, and a mom that can use a computer but can't read. It's a wonder I have any skills at all!

I still love though mom and dad. My birthday's coming up!