essays

Boomer Targeted Technology?      

Bring It! I personally embrace changing technology. There is no way I want to regress to living as my parents or grandparents did. Any problems that new technology brings, further innovation solves. Humans invent and reinvent continuously to make their lives better.

I’m aghast to read that appliance manufacturers are pandering to our looming impairments and disabilities.

We stopped being the Pepsi Generation when the Pepsi started going straight to our paunches, but are we really so paunchy as to need grab bars in the bathroom that will support 350 pounds? Are we really so forgetful as to require glass-top stoves designed to prevent boil-overs? But we are as vain as we are fussy, are we not? Are we ready to buy dryers that have pedestals that reduce stooping when we pull our gym shorts out? What will that do to our self-esteem?

The Wall Street Journal blabbers on with the old news about how Japanese car makers put their young engineers in fat suits, and stuffs cotton in their ears to simulate hearing loss, and wraps their fingers in tape to simulate arthritis.

Hooray for them, I say. Here’s another tip, Mr. Honda Toyota, we are severely constrained in our cars so can you bring back buttons that actually stick out and can be grabbed and twisted? Remember, they were recessed because we didn’t want our kids with permanent cigarette lighter knobs embedded. Now the kids are relegated to the back seat and never see their parent’s faces in the car. Talk about self-esteem issues! Boomers are dying, this is our future generation who never gets to see the “O Face” in the car when I tailgate. “O Face” as in “Oh Shi….” So go to it young engineers! Keep on with your loud clickers and large knobs on washing machines, think more about the French door refrigerator with bottom freezers, develop more conveniences like the once a year detergent dispenser for washing machines.

When the short-sighted marketing guy that wrote about us having self-esteem problems gets his first Boomer malady, he will change his tune. He will learn that self-esteem goes out the window with your first colonoscopy.

Mark Van Patten writes a blog called Going Like Sixty and has been married to the same woman since 1968.

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