iPhones. They may be simple gadgets for the average teenager to use, but I have learned through hours of agonizing pain and repetitive teaching that the same can’t be said for adults. Forget raising children, learning to use the iPhone may be the hardest thing adults have to endure in their lives.
I can recall the moment I first realized my dad had gotten his iPhone 4S. I was waiting in line to get into a concert at the local venue Trees in Dallas. My legs were tired from standing and my stomach was empty. All of a sudden I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I thought for a second it could be a text from a hot girl, only to have my heart drop once I read Dad on the screen. I opened the message and waiting for the screen to load. Immediately I noticed something. The message was the brilliant iMessage blue instead of the unappealing Text Message green. My father, the technology-savvy guru himself, had an iPhone.
When my dad decided to finally give into peer pressure and buy himself an iPhone, I was completely and utterly shocked. I was also apprehensive. The moment he showed me his new, black iPhone I realized he was helpless without my Apple genius. I knew an uphill battle lay ahead of me. Sure my dad had had a Blackberry, but the iPhone was a whole new monster. Teaching him to use it would be a long and tedious process that could even result in death.
The beginning was the worst. Rolling my eyes and sighing became a common occurrence as I attempted to teach the most basic iPhone skills, like listening to messages. It was a mystery to me how he didn’t naturally know how to do everything on his phone that I did.
The funniest part of the whole ordeal had to be when he first attempted to text. My dad trying to use the touch screen keyboard was like a penguin trying to fly. Needless to say, it wasn’t working out too well. His huge thumbs could not hit one letter without also hitting three others. The autocorrect didn’t help much either. When he sent me the text “Is your bible ok? Im gonna rheow awh the receipt” after he bought me my new bible, I began to accept that he was a hopeless case.
However, he began to have flickers of hope. He got frustrated and called his phone mean names on multiple occasions but his texting abilities began to show minor improvement. He even downloaded the Fox4 Weather app and ESPN Scorecenter app on his own. Obviously I was amazed by his progress. He might as well have won the Nobel Prize or discovered the cure for AIDS. My very own father was making a baby step into the 21st century. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Although I know I wasn’t the most patient teacher, my student showed tremendous improvement. He might still ask me every day how to do stuff on his phone and be amazed by what the iPhone can do, but then again, so am I. Although my dad only knows about a tenth of the things his phone can do (that’s being generous), I don’t know half of what it can do either. Okay, I probably know more like 90%, but what’s the difference?
What I’m saying is do what is say, not what I do. We should be more patient with each other. Not everything we think is easy is easy to others and vice versa. We should all try to just be a little more encouraging to the people around us. But hey, there’s probably an app for that.
