Millennial Breakdown

I've written sporadically about how the new generation (I guess I am now in senior citizen territory) cannot do simple tasks that we boomers take for granted. Where does the postage stamp go on the envelope? How do I fold the New York Times to read on the train?

I blogged a similar topic here in March 2017.
(http://quicktakespro.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-coming-crash-of-internet.html)

Remember way back when...in school you had to learn basic math even though you had that nice Texas Instruments calculator? I never got the hang of that one but my Casio with none of the fancy functions worked just fine. Who did not enter 01134 and turn it upside down so it says hEll0?

But I digress, as I always do. The point was that you needed to have some math skills to really understand what the calculator was doing. Does the answer makes sense? Did I hit + instead of -? You get the point.

You need map skills to know that blindly following google map directions can get you stuck in rush hour traffic in the heart of downtown Manhattan instead of taking a better route. I also mentioned that last March.

So, even though you do everything by email there will be the odd time when your water bill must be mailed to the utility because they do not take credit cards. You need to know where to put the stamp.

I admit to clinging to the old ways of having a little cash in my pocket and planning my travels in advance. Here is the story. My 22-year old daughter flew back to NY to spend the weekend with friends and of course visit us. She ended up at a friend's summer house in the boondocks of Northern New Jersey and needed to get herself back to us on Long Island Sunday morning. No problem, right?

She asked me for help picking a bus to NYC. How should I know? She finally figured out where the bus was but she had to get there. Did her friends wake up early to drive her? Of course not. But no problem! Uber!

Well, let's say there is not much coverage in the NJ boonies early on a Sunday morning.

Long story, short, I would have know exactly how I was getting back to the city to catch a Long Island bound train on time before I even left for Jersey. I do not expect all of my needs, whether travel or food or even sunscreen, to be waiting on demand in real time for when I summon them.

The bottom line is she waited for her friends to drive back to NYC. Oh, and they did not even drop her off at Penn Station. She had to take the subway.

Millenials are so much more sophisticated than I ever was but they are helpless in the face of any glitch. They are so much smarter than I am yet who gets the call when things go wrong?

OK, I'm done. Where's my prune juice?

And get off my lawn.