At this moment in time there are five remotes on my coffee table.  One for the DVD player (yes, we still have one of those), one for the cable box, one for the new sound bar, one for the roku (which we probably won’t need because the smart TV is smarter than the roku I think) and the TV remote.  There are 26 separate buttons on the TV remote alone, not including the numbers.  I’m sure all of the little symbols on the buttons are supposed to be user friendly, however, I struggle as a user usually.

My husband responded to his gift like a little kid on Christmas, which was good because it was Christmas.  And not just because he had just received a new TV that would fit beautifully with the sound bar and sub woofer he had bought for me (yeah, sure), but he had all these new remotes.  All of these cool new connections.  Bluetooth palooza!

It’s been an entire day and the men of the house have been playing with the TV all day.  We had to watch the beginning of The Force Awakens just to hear the opening music through the sound bar.  We watched part of an NBA game just to see the colors and checked out the Netflix which is part of the TV somehow.  I haven’t had to figure out anything in terms of the remotes yet but I’m afraid to be alone with them because I may never be able to watch TV by myself ever again.

I mentioned the sound bar and sub woofer as a gift for me.  You see, my sweet husband and son bought a new turntable for me to play some old vinyl I got when my mom passed away that used to belong to my dad.  Music I used to listen to when I was a kid/teenager and has great meaning for me.  It seems however, that my husband saw the need to get me the best speakers he could so that I could listen to my records anywhere in the house or something like that.  Hence, the sound bar.  Never mind that he had been looking at these things for a while, saying how much he would LOVE to have one to watch movies with.  And now he had a reason to buy one.  Pretty convenient, don’t you think? : )

In the meantime, we’ve brought new technology into the house.  Back in the day, I would turn on the record player, guide the needle onto the groove of choice and the sound came out of the speakers.  Everything was hardwired, no Bluetooth.  Easy Peezy.  So this should be interesting when we pick up the turntable tomorrow.  Will it also be smarter than me like the TV?

I certainly don’t want to be one of “those” older people who struggle completely with technology.  After all, I use my computer at school with my short throw projector, occasionally use my iPad and I get the difference between HDMI and Apple TV.  But changes in technology happen so quickly it feels like I just can’t keep up.  And while all of this technology is supposed to make things faster and easier for us, for me it just slows things down because it only improves your way of life if you’re good at it.  So for me it can be a source of great stress.  It makes me grateful for friends and family who don’t make fun of me (too much, anyway) and help when I can’t make things work.

And now, I will depend on the techy people in my family to help me learn how to deal with this new smart TV.  Because even thought it’s hard, I have enough pride to know I never want technology to be smarter than me.