Published: August 15, 2009 08:43 am      

What I don't know can really hurt

A man is telling a simpleton that a thermos bottle keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold.

“But how,” asked the puzzled listener, “does it know what’s supposed to be hot, and what’s supposed to be cold?”

As for me, I’ve got this swell company-owned cell phone that I also use as an alarm clock. It has a setting to go off just on weekday mornings.

How does it know which day is which? Like the simpleton, I haven’t a clue.

It’s not just that my rapidly encroaching decrepitude is leaving me unfit to function in a computer-dominated world.

Nah.

I never needed computers to be confused. I was dumbfounded long before the first mating of cable wire and modem.

For instance, I don’t know how the toilet works.

Curiously enough, during casual conversation I am occasionally asked to expound on any theories I might have pertaining to the creation of the universe.

These questions _ by the way _ are almost always asked by people who have their own theories, and really couldn’t care less about any I might have as long as they can tell me theirs.

So, there I am, a guy who can’t even discern how the toilet works, being expected to know what the Almighty really had in mind before the Big Bang.

I’m one of those fellows whose knowledge of car engines is limited to being reassured by the start-up sounds they make after I turn the ignition key.

When it comes to the do-it-yourself toolbox stuff they tried to teach me in “shop” class, I’m an ignoramus who should always be kept a prudent distance away from any power tool. I’m in awe when some guy tells me he personally built an addition to his house or “put in a deck.”

But more than anything else, computers are to blame for me so often feeling like Fred Flintstone in a George Jetson world.

During the course of my working day, despite my finest efforts to avoid them, I am far too often drawn into episodes in which I must be present when complex computer issues are discussed.

These are all apparently matters of great importance. I really wouldn’t know. Still, one must never let on that one has no idea what everyone is talking about.

So, I have learned to employ a suitable strategy. I appear very serious, my arms crossed and my lower lip curled downward.

If the conversation lasts for more than a few minutes, I am apt to be seen pensively tapping my chin with fore and middle fingers while looking judgmentally at whoever happens to be talking at the time.

The key to this gambit is to make certain that my eyes do not actually glass over while my mind scoots over to the topic of who might be pitching for the Yankees that night.

Sooner or later, someone will come up with the brilliant idea of contacting the geniuses at “tech services” to solve the computer problem.

I nod sagely, mutter something about making sure someone gets that done quickly or we’re all in big trouble, and walk away slowly as if I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.

That sort of tactic does not, of course, work with my four adult children, or, for that matter, their mother.

While I’m pretty good at surfing (why it’s called that is just one of the many computer mysteries I shall never unravel) the Internet, everybody in my immediate family knows far more technical stuff than I do.

This, for some reason, is cause for great mirth among them, especially my 21-year-old son, the only one of the offspring still living under my roof.

Any arm-crossing, chin-tapping and judgmental-expressioning I might attempt is useless.

“Poor old guy” or something similar is what is usually uttered after I plead for help with a computer question that is always apparently ridiculously simple.

“How could you not know that?” Even if not spoken, it is shouted by my son’s pitying eyes.

It’s enough to give a fellow a real crisis of confidence.

Come to think of it, how does a thermos know what it should keep cold and what it should keep hot?

___

Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.