Fear of Unmanageable Household Objects

It’s not as if I’m technologically illiterate. I have two computers, a Blackberry and a blog, but I just don’t have the years required to get a postgraduate degree in timesaving devices.

When I went shopping for a new stove recently, the salesperson looked at me like someone who’d wandered in from the year 1900 when I asked why the floor models had so many buttons. My old stove had four burner knobs and an oven dial with most of the numbers worn away. The new one I was considering had 12 on its shiny control panel, plus dual controls for small and large burners and some stuff relating to the convection oven, which I still don’t understand no matter how many times it’s explained. Not to mention the bottom “warming tray,” which takes the place of the usual dark and scary drawer that held rusty muffin tins and the unused broiler pan on my old-school stove. The space-age model I bought came with a bottle of ceramic cook-top cleaner and strict instructions from the installer to NEVER clean the stainless steel with a paper towel. I never thought I’d miss the area under my old stove top where the boiled-over tomato soup went to die, but I do, I really do.

I guess I should be thankful the stove and car didn’t come with a DVD, because I also have an expensive pair of shoes, an expensive electric toothbrush and a box of expensive makeup gathering dust because I don’t have time to watch the DVDs that will tell me how to use them properly. I can’t even keep up with my Netflix queue! Sure, I could just put the shoes on and start walking, but what if I’m doing it wrong? After all, these shoes are based on the Masai method of walking barefoot across the plains of Africa. It’s all very scientific, and if I watched the video, maybe I’d learn why the shoes require you to balance on a fulcrum while walking. And then I could move on to the makeup DVD that promises to make me look like Lauren Hutton or the other one that will teach me to master dipping, tapping, swirling and blending until my face is decades younger. Since I’ve never made it through either “movie,” I only look minutes younger when I finish applying it.

Unlike my makeup, which is the equivalent of an elective in the school of life, I’m told that my electric toothbrush is a requirement. That my teeth will go straight to hell unless I use it. The dental hygienists frown and shake their heads when I admit it never gets turned on, and that, gasp, I’ve never seen the movie starring this new action appliance. Evidently no one uses a manual toothbrush any longer because it doesn’t vibrate your teeth hard enough to knock out old Mr. Tooth Decay, nor does it reverberate inside your brain pan until you want to beg for a root canal.

My youngest daughter is convinced that I’m suffering from ADHD. “Mom,” she says, “look at all you’ve done with your life and then imagine how much more you could do if you could just think straight.” Like learning to use a bionic toothbrush? But she’s right about my not thinking straight. I start out at the same point everyone else does, but on the way to, say, programming my new heart rate monitor, my mind starts to wander down a side road, leads me into another room and wonders whether it wouldn’t be a good time to open the paint set I got for Christmas and start a little landscape. Until I have to decipher the instructions for mixing colors and then my brain gives a big sigh and suggests we go out for coffee.

It’s not as if I’m technologically illiterate. I have two computers, a Blackberry and a blog, but I just don’t have the years required to get a postgraduate degree in timesaving devices. In fact, I’d rather be shaving my legs with a dull clam shell razor than reading a stove manual the size of a telephone book. I’m technologically petulant. As a result, I’m living in a graveyard of abandoned implements straight out of a dark version of The Brave Little Toaster. The latest addition to the cast of characters is a fl at screen HDTV, which I badly wanted, needed, HAD to have. I naively assumed I would carry it home, take it out of the box, and plug in the cable just in time for the new season of Top Chef. I figured I could at least watch other people cook even if I couldn’t operate my own stove.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the box contained pieces that required a SCREWDRIVER and a DIAGRAM and the biggest manual to date. Don’t panic, I thought. Start simple. So I took out the special rag included to clean the frame, but the instructions printed on its plastic bag were cryptic and threatening: “Only make cleaning motions in ONE direction!” What would happen if I absentmindedly made cleaning motions both clockwise and counterclockwise with a Swiffer someday? I had just had the Fear of God thrown into me by a plastic bag.

When I lifted the screen out and got a glimpse of the rows and rows of colorcoded sockets on the back, I stuffed it back in the Styrofoam pads and backed away in defeat. Where the hell should the cable go and what did I need to plug in those other sockets? It was hopeless. If I’d been wearing the heart rate monitor I couldn’t program, I’m sure it would have shown that I’d entered the hyperventilating zone and needed a home defibrillator, but I’d probably be dead before anyone could get through the inevitable manual and accompanying DVD. For now, I’m still watching a 13-inch TV, brushing my teeth with a Reach, slapping drugstore spackle on my face and wearing old-school Converse sneakers. Keeping it real, living the simple life. At least until I bring home that amazing multi-room music system the tv salesman showed me. The one that wirelessly streams millions of songs from multiple sources through zone players in every room of the house via a simple-to-master handheld controller. The one that sounded so easy to set up when he described it. I’m sure I’ll be singing along at the stove in no time. Really.

Nikki Hardin is the founder and publisher of skirt! Please invite her to dinner.

~Nikki Hardin