Twenty-First Century Problems

By Nan DePlume

Installment Seven: In which our hero looks for love online and helps her mother navigate a smartphone.

“It’s like a funhouse mirror, but without the fun.” Mom brandishes the shiny rose-gold iPhone that I begged her not to get.

When she hands it over, a face looms into view. It’s me, shot from below and sporting jowls, lines, and blotches I’d never even imagined before. “Yikes, that’s horrifying! But I know what the problem is: You’ve got the camera turned on and the lens is aimed at you, not pointing out at the world.”

“Why would you want your camera pointed at you? Make it stop!”

“Mama, you’re clearly not part of today’s selfie-obsessed culture, which is something I appreciate about you. As for making it stop, all you have to do is hit the little icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and the camera faces out again. See?”

She dismisses both me and the phone with an imperious wave. “You know I can’t see things like that without my glasses. Just make it stop.”

“I want to show you how to fix the camera if this problem comes up again. Where are your glasses?”

“Ah, honey, they’re around here somewhere.” Mom’s voice quavers, and she seems to be teetering on the edge of a technology-induced swoon. Which is understandable, since she’s 85 years old, has never even had a flip-phone before, and spent most of the morning wrestling with her mystifying new toy before I stopped by.

A thought energizes her, making her eyes widen and her posture perk up. “When I find my glasses, will you show me how to use Facebook?”

My mind flashes on all the unflattering pictures and embarrassing posts that could lie ahead. “You know, no one uses Facebook anymore. But I think you’ll really like YouTube, which all the cool kids are crazy about. Let me show you…”

“By the time you’re my age, you accept you no longer have a chance in hell at being one of the cool kids,” Mom says, pouting for an instant, then breaking into a full-face smile that puts me in mind of both sunshine and a shattered plate. “But I like to see what they’re up to.”

* * * *

Back home that evening, I get a call from my brother, Ned. “Mom is ruining my life with her iPhone,” he whines.

“Oh god, tell me about it. I spent close to two hours showing her stuff on it this afternoon, and when I got home, I had a message from her asking me if she could use it to make a call.”

“You should have told her she can’t. She’s already tried to Facetime me three times tonight. Fortunately, she keeps pushing the wrong button and hanging up.”

“I may have failed us by filling her in on how to use the phone, but I had to,” I say. “And all is not lost…I kept her off Facebook by telling her it was totally passé, which should spare us considerable embarrassment.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“I just emailed her an invitation to join Facebook,” Ned says.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“She asked me about it, and you know damn well that she’ll get more of a kick from seeing everybody’s pictures and posts than any of the rest of us do.”

He’s right, but that’s not the point. “And she’ll be commenting on those pictures and posts,” I remind him. “And once she figures out how to keep her camera facing out, she’ll be sharing pictures of us. Think of it: a stream of uncensored shots taken by an octogenarian who has never even heard of an Instagram filter and isn’t totally sure what she’s sharing because she keeps misplacing her glasses.”

“Perhaps I have just unlocked the gates of hell,” Ned admits.

* * * *

Extending the gates-of-hell theme, after dinner I sit down with my laptop and peruse the responses to the OK Cupid profile that I recently dusted off (keeping the age I’d used when I was last on the site two years back).

The first virtual message-in-a-bottle was an email from a fellow who calls himself Phoenix Rising:

“Your vocabulary and choice of photos shows you’re intellectual accomplishments and those wonderfully appealing physical attributes(smile).

My career is medical laboratory science and I took a position at a hospital here in Phoenix to get more sunshine in my life, but now I need more sunshine in my heart(smile). I am into nutritional supplements of enzymes, amino acids, and vitamins for continued mental alertness in my career and energy for other life activities(smile)!

You seem like the kind of lady I improved my nutritional regimen for.”

I stop right there and head to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine. To give my liver and waistline a break, tonight was supposed to be alcohol-free, but the combination of shepherding my mother into the Smartphone Age and winnowing through cyber-suitors demands something to blur the edges.

I sit back down to finish Phoenix Rising’s missive: “I hope distance will not be our impedance, but inspiration our stimulus. Let us not think of the distance, but of the opportunity for two souls to discover each other. I am just 2 hours by airplane from You! Once we meet in person we can decide about future living arrangements.

Check out www.visitphoenix.com for more info of here! Or www.azcentral.com/events for a calendar of events, concerts, art shows, and more.”

I suppose it’s magnanimous of Phoenix Rising to give me some time (and websites even) before I relocate. But enzyme-enhanced as he may be(smile), I don’t think I’m quite ready to relocate to Phoenix for nutritionally supplemented “activities.”

Next up is a note from BrightSide. That screen name is enough to curl my lip, but he looks kind of cute, in a hard-bitten way, so I read his message:

“you are a very very beautiful sexy lady and any man will be bless to be with you. Life is to short too live without someone two love and be loved. i will love you with every born in my body. please give me one chance. I am hard working and determined, with great Morales guided by the Lord, Please emile me.”

BrightSide sounds like a sap, but that great Morales dude might be interesting. I consider “emiling” to see if BrightSide would be willing to make an introduction, then decide against it.

There are a couple more messages from other potential suitors, but none as notable as the first two. Nor are they even slightly intriguing. Some of the men sound way too bland and conservative for me, others twisted and downright sleazy, and a few utterly unhinged. With the exception of a 20-something chubby white rapper who must have a mommy complex, the men in today’s batch are all at least 15 years my senior. When you’re over 40, that’s how it goes: Men your own age are no longer interested, leaving you with senior citizens and young weirdos.

I don’t blame the men my age—at least not all that much. They’re not trying to be mean to me and their other female peers; they simply have a hard time perceiving us. Men are slaves to biology, especially their reptilian brains, which are programmed to seek out fecundity. That seems to be true even of the most enlightened, feminist non-breeder—say, a Berkeley vegan with a vasectomy. Even if men don’t want kids anymore, they can’t stop themselves from wanting fecundity.

That’s why when they hit 45 or so, they divorce their first wife—the one they met in college—and marry their yoga instructor. Rationally, they’d save considerable expense (divorce settlements and child support) and effort (yoga is tough for an inflexible middle-aged man) if they stuck with the status quo. But rationality has nothing to do with it. The poor dears simply can’t help themselves.

Bumping up against this reality for the 600th time, I click back to the husky rapper’s profile. Maybe HunkMcFly’s not that overweight, maybe it’s just the hoodies he wears in his pictures. And why can’t I date someone 20 years younger, if all the 70-year-olds contacting me feel no compunction about it?

I’m on the brink of replying to HunkMcFly’s message when my iPhone dings. Mom has tagged me on Facebook. That was fast.

She’s posted a photo of me; my brother; and my ex-boyfriend, Mitchell. It’s Christmas, about 10 years ago, and we’re standing in front of Mom and Dad’s lavishly decorated tree, looking look younger, brighter, and more attractive than I ever remember us being. Mitch looks especially fetching, with laughter in his eyes and the goatee I’d always found so adorable. It’s weird that my mother has decided to make her Facebook debut with an old picture that includes an ex who’s long been off the scene, but I guess I’ll have to get used to weirdness like this now that she’s on the Interwebs. Including captions like the salacious-sounding one she came up with for this shot: “Look at this threesome!”