Reflecting on a recent shift between stress and resolution, I can discern the effects of adult learning. I’ve rarely recognized an example so brightly, so distinctly. At its center was my I-phone, upon which I’d become increasingly reliant. Already a generation out of date, it suddenly indicated that I could only access my “favorites”. How strange is this (?), I thought: my phone was clearly playing favorites: all other functions were inoperable.

Consulting with experts 40 or so years younger than I, we agreed that I might disconnect the unit from the computer, and turn it off. That usually worked. It didn’t. What to do in the middle of the weekend as I faced a busy week?

We discussed other options; until as a group we arrived at that fundamental fall-back position: to consult someone at the store, after the weekend. (Clearly they had better things to do than to attend to this trivial issue)

So, annoyed at the situation (I was reminded of my first computer and the moment that its lights faded— signaling a brain-drain of great import (I learned from this that back-up was essential), I took out my trusty, 20th Century appointment book and began copying appointment dates from the I-Cal function in the computer: hrrrummph !! I thought, snorting inwardly at the 21st Century technology people who’d convinced me that the I-Cal was the way to go. Here I am, downloading with a pen, into an appointment book, yet again.

I made some coffee. Read the paper. Then, feeling audacious , re-approached my computer. I read the I-phone manual (now deeply held in my computer’s memory) and decided that I might be able to solve the problem if I regressed the I-phone to its factory settings and again up-loaded the information I needed. As the I-phone’s current mental state diminished, I was reminded of its AT&T precursor from Bell Labs: the computerized version of the tune, “Daisy Daisy”: most of us remember it from the deep regression of HAL in the Kubrick film, 2001. Daisy Daisy were the last words HAL would speak as he’d returned to his computer origins.

I’d first heard that version of the song in high school, when a friend, whose father worked on that original computer project, played it for me. And now, here I was, 40 years later, still with AT&T, regressing my own junior-Hal to Daisy Daisy.

What shocked me was that I’d learned how to do it. That through all the trepidation and  my Luddite anxiety, I had absorbed so much. And had avoided an unnecessary trip to the Apple Store in the morning. Yes kids, it required some reading, but Dad figured it out!

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