A friend just related a story to me about how her very expensive universal remote wouldn’t work. She and her husband were unable to fix it. They called the manufacturer, GCI and the Geek Squad. It would cost them almost as much as the remote originally did to have someone come over and see if they could make it work. If not, they’d have to to buy a new one which would ultimately triple their original cost. And then their millennial daughter came home and asked why they were using the old remote. When it was explained to her, she picked up the remote that wouldn’t work and five minutes later it was working.
When I was much younger and VCRs were the latest in technology, I had to sit in my mom’s house, my Aunt Adeline’s house and my Aunt Ida’s house writing out in simple language how to tape something because they found the instructions very complicated. And since taping their soap operas was the only way to get them to leave the house during the day, they needed to know how to tape them.
As my friend explained how her daughter “fixed” their broken remote, I felt the world shift under my feet a bit. Suddenly, I’m my Aunt Adeline.