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"Hey, Gramps, can we order pizza?"
"Sure," I told the kid. "Dial the number."
The kid scratched his head. "Dial's some sort of soap, isn't it?"
I snatched the cellphone from the table and studied the flat surface. "I think I see the problem," I said. "No dial."
"No duh."
Years ago, a generation gap existed when grownups and youths struggled with each other over radically differing philosophies and lifestyles. Today, it's because technology has turned our words into nonsense.
I tapped the screen. "Crazy, huh? You call it a telephone, but it's got a TV screen, only without the rabbit ears and the vertical hold knob."
The kid backed away. "Don't paste bunny ears on my phone, Gramps."
The other day, I stood outside a car and went through the motions of turning a crank.
"What?" the kid yelled through the closed window.
I cranked my imaginary window harder.
The kid smiled, mimicked my cranking motion like it was some kind of secret greeting, and went back to staring at his phone with no dials. He probably was tapping out one of those messages that uses all those pound signs.
My wife slid an arm around my shoulders. "Sweetheart, he's never seen a window handle. In his short little life, car windows never rolled down."
This push-button society might be easier on our muscles, but it's a pain on fostering understanding between the generations.
The window slid down. "Careful, Grams, I think Gramps was having a spasm a minute ago."
"No dear, you just put him through the ringer."
"The what?"
My wife started her own hand-crank motion. "You know, the ringer. Like on those washing machines. You cranked clothes through it, and…"
The car window slid up, but not before we heard the kid mumble, "Maybe the verticals got hold of their rabbit ears or somethin'."
The generation gap of terminology. It's as real as walkie-talkies, Buffalo nickels and sign-off test patterns.
If you're a geezer like me, you know what it means if someone sounds like a broken record. You probably scratched a few. But when the kid found some of my old vinyls, he yelped, "How big's the laptop for these CDs?"
"They're records. You play them on the stereo. With needles."
The kid glanced nervously toward the door. I turned the LP over. "This is where we get the phrase, 'Catch you on the flip side.' It's the B side of the album. That meant more on the old 45s, but anyway…"
The kid was gone before I could yell, "Hold your horses." It's OK. He wouldn't have understood that, either.
Phone books, carbon copies, Saturday morning cartoons, mimeographs and Kodak moments -- all swept away. Or repurposed, like the pound sign. It gave me that weird feeling, like when you want to slam the phone but realize you can't even hang one up for real anymore.
My wife patted my shoulder. "You should blow off some steam. I know, pull up the antenna on your transistor radio, turn the dial clockwise and jam to some oldies."
I would have, too, except it had been so long since I'd seen a watch with hands that I couldn't remember what clockwise meant.
— Talk technical with Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.