Golfing and Computing

I've had a couple of reminders lately that I'm not exactly a spring chicken. Sometimes when I glance in the mirror, I see myself as I feel--adult, capable, but ....youthful. Then, life gives me a small reminder that while I may be adult and (mostly) capable.....ah

I've had my second golf lesson. The young man helping me was very sweet and gave me lots of positive reinforcement about what I was doing. However, the next day I had a sore muscle or two in places where I didn't realize I had muscles. I guess that happens to new golfers no matter what the age and I count any muscle usage as helpful. Next time we're going to try using a wood. Oh dear, I hope I can find the proper muscles for that.

I had another lesson about the ins and outs of my MacBook Pro. They are very helpful and there are many shortcuts and tricks that I would never have known about without the Apple Store's experts. The Apple word processing program is called Pages, and it is another reason I felt my age.

I learned to TYPE--on a manual typewriter. Later, I was thrilled to work on electric typewriters, and when I worked at the college I had an IBM Selectric, with a correction key. That was SO cool. I got so I would type along, realize I'd made a mistake and correct it without looking away from my copy. The error was lifted and replaced, slicker than slick.

WORD PROCESSING came along later, while I was teaching, and it was terrific. You could see everything before you had to put it to paper. Correcting was a snap.

But the word processing software got more complex. As I have fought with various programs, Microsoft Word for Windows has made me the craziest. It tried to give me way more help than I wanted. Pages is at least as "helpful." I was telling my Apple instructor how frustrating that can be for a person who typed, and the woman having a lesson across the counter heard me and seconded my comment. As it turns out, she was just a couple of years older and understood completely. If I want to make a list by using tabs, I think I should be able to. Apparently, if an item on my list is longer than the others, that confuses the program. I should ask the Pages software to insert a list. Then request that it stop using a list when I'm ready to go back to the paragraph form.

I know that the youngsters who grew up word processing don't understand my struggle. That's okay, there's still plenty I don't understand either.