Things You Won't Believe About Me

There will be many of you that will not find this column surprising. There will be some of you that will think I'm making all this up. There will be a few of you that will be so disappointed that you will stop reading me forever. And all of you will hopefully enjoy a good laugh at my expense.

I spent 40 years in the consumer electronics and consumer products industry. I worked for almost every electronics company with an office in America at one time or another. I've sold some of the most high tech products you can imagine, and use yourself now, to every retailer that ever sold electronics in North America. And not only do I not have most of them, but I have no idea how to use them myself. If things get too technical I will usually tell someone that, unless I can use my 8-track with it, there is little value to me.

I have never purchased or downloaded a song. I don't even know how to start to do that, and I have never had an interest in learning how. I have a couple of friends that are musicians and they send me songs to preview occasionally. It takes me about an hour to figure out each time how to open them to hear them. You'll recall a few columns back, I bragged about the wife and I having a Zoom family gathering for our first time. Haven't done it since, but I'm sure we will at some point. We have never Facetimed either. Somehow our lives go on.

We still have landlines for our primary phones. They work fine, I can hear better with them, and I almost never cut anyone off while using them. We have an answering machine built into the phone so we do not use voice mail from the phone company either.

Linda is still using her flip phone, when she remembers to turn it on. Don't ever call her because she won't answer, and she has never recorded a message for her voice mail. For me, I finally got texting two years ago, but only because my real estate boss made me. I use it more than I should now but if I didn't have it I would be fine with that too.

Here is the last video game I ever owned, and played. Well, actually, I have a friend that does have video games hooked up to his TV and I have occasionally played a couple of them when visiting, primarily bowling and golf. I never got into any of the games over the years, and since we do not have children, it was never a priority for us to have them.

Here is where I may lose many of you as friends.

Not only have I never streamed anything but I have no idea how to do it. We had friends stay with us about a year ago or so, and they figured out how to get their Netflix onto our TV, and we watched something with them one night but have never ventured down this path on our own. It seems like too much work and expense for something I don't miss. We also have never had HBO, Showtime, or Cinemax.

We just got a DVR with our cable a little over two years ago. We almost never use it and I'm not sure why we are paying extra for it. I can tell you that I have never seen any of the following shows: The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, The Wire, West Wing, Game of Thrones, Arrested Development, Dexter, or Orange is the New Black, among many, many others.

My reasons are simple. For the better part of 35 years I travelled a lot for business. In fact, I was gone as many as 200 nights a year in many years, so for me to get into a weekly series was a waste of time, because, it was very likely that I would miss three or four weeks at a time, and would have no idea what was happening when, or if, I ever got back to it again. The other reason is because I just never found them to be of the tiniest interest to watch. Again, I have never missed them, and even when they've shown up on basic cable as reruns, I have not watched them.

So there is my lack of tech savvy story. I'm not proud of it but it is what it is. Go ahead and shake your head, it is hard to believe, I know. I probably need to invest in these books.

While I'm sharing my lack of social interaction with you, here are two other stories that will likely cause you to reconsider our friendship.

I walked out of Les Miserables after fifteen minutes. It was the second worst play I have ever seen by ten minutes. I also walked out of Rent at intermission, it was the worst play I've ever seen, and the only reason I waited until then, was because we went with another couple and I didn't want to leave them. Turns out they were thrilled we wanted to leave because they hated it too.

Among the many, many movies I have never seen are: Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Top Gun, Titanic, Schindler's List, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Matrix, The Avengers, The Hunger Games, Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, any of The Fast & Furious movies, any kids movie, and any of the movies based on comic book heros. Including any pre-qualls, sequalls, or various versions of them.

I have seen every James Bond movie, in a movie theater, and Daniel Craig is the best James Bond ever. Don't bother arguing with me on this. I'm right, period.