My husband and I went shopping for a camcorder and a laptop yesterday. I have never felt so stupid in my entire life! I have always considered myself to be fairly intelligent. I never had delusions that MENSA would call and ask me to join, but I'm not mentally challenged, or so I thought until yesterday.
So here we walk in like lambs to the slaughter. We started looking at the camcorders first. The salesman and I say "man" tongue in cheek, because I am not sure he was old enough to shave. "Can I help you?" It seemed like an innocent enough question. "We are looking for a camcorder". It seemed like a straight forward answer. The last camcorder we bought was 11 years ago. It was really straightforward. You put the tape in the side, and pressed play. I mean your arm began to shake after holding the camera for a few minutes, and you needed to take muscle relaxers after a special event, but it worked.
"What are you looking for?" I thought we had already answered this, but apparently he was asking us some secret code that we did not understand. "So how much gibble gibble goo do you want?" ( I say gibble gibble goo, because what he asked made just about as much sense. "We just want it to take movies of the kids". So finally we decide on a camera, then the next question "So do you want to look at cards?" We are in Future shop, they don't sell card, ohhhhhh memory cards. Now we are in whole new level of challenged, at this point I am beginning to feel like my Grandma. "Hey sonny, how much moving pictures can I trap in this one" (ok I sounded a little smarter than that). He starts quoting gigga bites and mega bites. I just want to know how many hours I can hold on it, that's all. I don't understand new technology, it scares me. So that is all figured out, I have a tiny tiny little shred of dignity, and we move on to laptops where my dignity that I do have dissolves.
Enter now a new peach fuzz mustache kid. Peach fuzz mustache kid asks "What do you want to do with it?" Who knew buying a computer was so complicated. He started talking about quad processors and motherboards and mega bites, and I stopped listening because I was in the corner curled in the fetal position whimpering. I just want to put my pictures on it and send emails, I'm not clever enough to do anything else. So we decided to go to another store.... big mistake.
So at the next store we are helped by some kid who doesn't even look old enough to grow a peach fuzz mustache. I start asking my old fart questions. He answers my questions in gibberish and not only that he keeps looking at my husband like it was he who had asked the questions, and I was not even there. Now here's what the kid does not know. I may be an idiot when it comes to technology, but my husband is THE village idiot when it comes to the computer. So we left there more confused than ever.
When did I become an old woman who wistfully looks back to the old days? Why didn't someone warn me this would happen? Why can't they have sales people who know how to dumb it down for us technologically challenged people? I think I should take my ten year old shopping next time, I think she knows more than both of us put together.
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