“You gotta keep poking and clicking,” a friend tells me. “That’s what my daughter does.”

By this, she means that learning new technology is not a straight path. I have to play with it. I have to find the process of learning fun and challenging and not get hung up when I make mistakes along the way.

I know I’m not the only one who finds the “poke and click” mindset a challenge when I just want to get the darned thing done and move on to something I enjoy. Like reading a book. With real pages.

My current frustration is with my phone. I use my phone for taking photos and, occasionally, for making actual phone calls. I don’t do well with texting. If you send me an email (and I hope you do!), I’ll likely respond within minutes because I am sitting at my computer all day pretending to write. Getting an email gives me an excuse to leave whatever I am working on and send off a cheery note.

My phone, on the other hand, sits on the corner of my desk, ignored. It must make a noise or something when people text me, but I never notice. It isn’t until I pick it up to make an actual phone call (which could be a very long time) that I see I have a message.

“Uh-oh. I hope it’s not Mom.”

It won’t be my mom. She learned her lesson ages ago and no longer sends me text messages because I never see them. She sends me an email, which -- she will tell you -- I respond to immediately.

I have never bonded with my phone. I don’t use it much because I’m already on my computer. I have this gigantic monitor, and switching over to the itty-bitty screen doesn’t make sense to me. I might have to put on my reading glasses. I don’t see the point.

The result is that I don’t know how to use my phone very well. But my phone isn’t helping me any. It doesn’t even take pictures easily. The response time is so slow that the person I am trying to photograph has allowed the smile to fade from their face. The dog I am photographing has been distracted and is looking in the other direction. The sun has gone under a cloud -- or possibly set -- before my phone gets around to snapping a photo.

“You need a new phone,” my husband, Peter, said after taking six photos in a row that looked as if the subject was underwater.

And so, after a lot of consideration, I decided to buy a new phone. I tried to buy one from a phone store, but they didn’t answer their phone. I realized what a dumb bunny I was. You’re not supposed to call a phone store. Duh.

So I did what they wanted me to do and ordered it online. Now it is coming in the mail, and I am filled with a faint dread because I am sure I will have to do something complicated to get it up and working -- something involving a lot of poking and clicking -- before I am allowed to simply take less fuzzy photos and ignore my text messages in peace.

It’s good for me, I suppose. Poking and clicking will fend off Alzheimer’s perhaps and make me believe I am not too old to learn new tricks.

But the truth is, I’m not really looking for new tricks. Today, I’d be perfectly happy with some old tricks that worked.

Till next time,

Carrie

Photos from this week’s column can be found on Carrie’s website: CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

This time of year still hits me hard.

It is the anniversary of the death of my best girlfriend, Angel, who died too young and left an Angel-shaped hole in my life.

"Can it be six years?" I ask my husband, Peter, in disbelief. Angel died at 50 years old, six years ago.

In the years since she died, I have tried to fill the spot she occupied, without success. I expect new friends to be like Angel, and this is, of course, unfair. I expect they will be willing to listen to whatever mad idea has entered my head at any hour of the day. I expect them to type as fast as they speak and keep up three conversations at once -- usually with people on different sides of the globe.

While I considered Angel my best girlfriend, I had no illusions that she felt the same about me. Angel was rich in friends. There was no limit to her ability to support and encourage and cajole and occasionally berate her legions of friends into being more hopeful and less gloomy and better able to face the very particular challenges of their lives. Angel floated into and over so many lives. I was just lucky to be one of them.

Of course, she was no angel.

I remember her boyfriend, Alain, discovering she had thawed out all the baguettes he had been saving in the freezer. He was enraged and at a loss for words.

"She is not perfect!" he finally exploded.

This was not news to anyone who knew her. We did not seek her out because she was perfect. We sought her out because she was so unbelievably real.

There was no experience she would dismiss out of hand, no passion she did not think was worth exploring, no body of knowledge she felt was beyond her depth. Art and cooking and politics and string theory and Disney movies and bad '80s rock 'n' roll and fashion and trashy novels and whatever else the person she happened to be talking to was interested in -- this is what Angel was interested in. She tried everything. She was the first to admit she was wrong -- and she frequently was. But it never discouraged her from experiencing another thing, learning a bit more.

Today, I felt a little wicked.

I spoke the truth to a friend. I told him he had hurt me and that I didn't want to put up with his nonsense anymore. It's the sort of thing I don't often do. Usually, I tell myself how lucky I am and how much easier things are for me than for some people and how I should just forget about the slight. This time I did not. I felt a little guilty, I confess.

And I heard Angel laughing.

Angel would chide me for being so anxious, so careful, so worried about things -- things that were never worth worrying about in the long run. She was all about speaking her truth. She was all about getting her needs met without shame or embarrassment. She has been dead for six years, and she is still teaching me. She was bigger and freer and more lively than any person I've known, which is why it is so hard to accept that she is no longer alive.

I don't need another friend like Angel, because there are no other friends like Angel. Besides, the goal was never to replicate her. The goal was to try -- in my cautious, nervous, high-strung way -- to become a bit more like her.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

"It's a great time to get old!" That's what my husband, Peter, says.

He's right. And getting old is -- as the saying goes -- better than the alternative. I was thinking this while waiting for my father to get a pacemaker.

My father had no idea he needed a pacemaker until two days before he got one. They had been monitoring his heart because he was suddenly so tired that he was getting winded going up a flight of stairs. My dad typically climbs a lot of stairs, so this was not a good development. The monitor revealed that his heart was beating much more slowly than it was supposed to.

"It's been a cold spring," I told him. "Maybe you're just going into hibernation."

The cardiologist did not seem to think this was the case. She told my dad that he should get a pacemaker.

"Not interested," my dad said.

My dad has avoided making major purchases since he turned 80 a few years back. He says he won't live long enough to get enough use out of them.

He has not replaced the come-along that is missing a few teeth. He claims it was entirely user error when the come-along failed to catch and he applied his full strength to it when he was pulling his Bobcat out of the woods. With no resistance on the winch, my dad flew over backward and broke a bone on his ankle.

"You need a new come-along," I told my dad.

"I'm not going to live long enough to buy a new come-along!" he told me. My sister got him one for Christmas.

So I was not surprised that his initial reaction to the pacemaker was that this was another extravagant acquisition he did not need. The cardiologist disagreed. She told my dad that it was no big deal. They could get him in the next day, and he would spend only a few hours in the hospital.

My dad relented. The procedure went without a hitch, and my dad's heart is now beating at a more chipper pace.

"It's a great time to get old!" I told my dad. My dad agreed.

I have noted that conversations with friends are now dominated by discussions of their latest ailments. It used to be -- before GPS and when my friends were younger -- when there was a lull in conversation, the favorite topic was: "The Best Way to Get There."

"You came up 35, huh? I always think it's a little faster to follow the river, and then when you get to ..." And so on.

I remember thinking this was the dullest subject ever -- comparing routes and trying to determine which one might shave 10 minutes off your driving time.

"You just wasted 15 minutes talking about it!" I wanted to scream.

Now there is little point in discussing navigation since we have relinquished those decisions to our phones. Instead, the most frequent discussions lately are entitled, "My Current Ailment."

"Yeah, I've had that, too. And lately, I've been getting pains in my ..." And so on.

Thankfully, I don't have a lot to talk about. And my dad is an excellent role model. He says, "Everyone is going to have something go wrong with them, eventually. It's just a question of what it will be."

When my dad left his meeting with the cardiologist, he asked what he should do differently before the procedure.

"Just try to act like an 80-year-old for a few days, would you?" she suggested.

I think she was kidding. My dad said he would try.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS