When Takumi was in kindergarten the world was just coming into video games. A group of about four of us mothers decided we did not want our sons to be consumed by video games and so we refused to have them in our house. Of course we were all met by wails of disbelief from the sons and told how mean we were and how EVERY other boy in the world had video games but them. The mothers rallied though and we often sought support from each other about the decision.
However as our boys grew older, one by one the mothers fell by the wayside and gave in to the family's wants. By the end of kindergarten Mrs. Furui and I were the only ones who still hadn't bought video game machines and games. (But both our sons outsmarted us and somewhere along the line in upper elementary school grade the boys bought their own hand held games with their own allowances...)
Mrs. Furui's family also didn't need to have video players or DVD machines though my family gave in to that trend early. And Mrs. Furui isn't a camera buff like me nor a blogger. She still has her husband print things for her from his office computer. If you want Mrs. Furui, you have to call her house phone.
Our reticence about technology extended to cell-phones for many years. I happily lived without one when my friends were sharing their new cell phones and available do-dads. Finally I inherited Leiya's old cell phone when she went to the States (that's been awhile now) and a couple of years ago I actually went out and BOUGHT my very own cell phone that has cute animation and lovely melodies. But Mrs. Furui has resisted conforming to the new world... And I love her for her stubbornness. It seemed like she was a pillar of a past lifestyle standing in the whiz of the modern world.
So imagine my surprise yesterday when I stopped in at her house before running some errands and she pointed to a bag... with a cell phone in it! MRS. FURUI'S VERY OWN CELL PHONE!!! She has joined the cyber world!
Mrs. Furui's husband (who, as a physicist is more adaptable to technology) is going to Europe next week for a conference. And he will take his iPad with him and wanted to be able to e-mail Mrs. Furui. (No wi-fi in the house) so, this weekend he dragged her into a cell phone store despite Mrs. Furui's protests and now she has a cell phone...
Which she doesn't know how to use...
I am proud to say, that despite my very limited knowlege about cell phones, I was able to link our cell phones to get Mrs. Furui's e-mail address and other pertinent cell phone information. And send her a text message. And show her how to send me one. And register my cell phone information in her cell phone directory. Don't I sound masterful? That's all I know how to do and I made so many mistakes while trying to show her, we lent new meaning to the term "blind leading the blind".
I will miss not being able to say,
"I have a friend who still doesn't have a cell phone."
But I will now be able to contact her and probably drive her to frustration when she tries to reply to the text messages I'm going to send her.
You will notice that neither of us have even considered joining the iPhone world of touch panels. We are still both pretty old-fashioned.
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