Monthly Archive: August 2025

It was some time in the early 90s while working at the Kennedy Space Center that I heard a bunch of commotion coming out of the engineering office. When I went to see what the excitement was, one of them said, “It’s the World Wide Web!”

Needless to say, I didn’t quite understand the magnitude of this statement, but the irony is not lost on me that although I was part of the generation that was on the forefront of this technology, I sometimes still need help getting on Hulu.

A favorite memory of that era has me as one of the first in our group to use a newfangled gadget called the “Mouse.” Up until then, every single command on every computer we were using required keystrokes to do even the simplest task.

I was asked to teach a visiting scientist from Sweden how to use this new gadget. He and I sat shoulder to shoulder in my tiny cubicle staring at the image on my flickering monitor.

“First, you click here,” I said as I dragged the Mouse across the mouse pad, “And then you click there.”

He put his hand on my arm and looked at me quizzically, saying, “What means click?”

Yet, after taking courses in advanced FORTRAN, COBOL and Assembler — the computer languages that ran those computers — I sometimes still have to enlist the help of a family member to stop our Alexa from flashing yellow.

I really don’t mind being part of the old school generation who just may have forgotten more about computers than most folks will ever know about them.

And, I kind of love the fact that at my recent high school reunion hardly anyone had their nose buried in their cell phone. Everyone was simply enjoying connecting with each other, in person, old school style.

I recently had our pool water tested.

“Your acid level is high,” the lady behind the counter said after running the water through the mad scientist looking contraption they use at the pool place.

“I wouldn’t let anyone swim until you get that under control,” she said.

“I swam this morning,” I told her.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at me with a scrunched up “sucks for you” face.

When I told hubby the story, I said, “So, if I wake up dead tomorrow, you know why.”

No response. He famously doesn’t give much credence to the water testing process of these places.

Later that day, he came out of the bathroom waving a bloody Q-tip.

“Either I have a cut somewhere in my ear, or I’m dying,” he said.

“You can’t be dying,” I said. “I told you I may be waking up dead tomorrow.”

He looked at me with his “I am married to a crazy woman” expression.

“They’ll never know what happened to us,” I said. “It’ll be another Gene Hackman and his wife situation all over again.”

This launched us into a crazy dialog about forensics.

“They’ll figure it out,” he said. “They’ll find the printout from the pool place, and then they’ll see the bloody Q-tip in the trash.”

“Besides,” he said. “Your brother has seen every episode of Forensics Files at least fifty times, this will be a piece of cake.”

“Okay, then,” I said, ironically satisfied.