Last week my husband and I were on vacation in Grand Cayman. We were having a wonderful time relaxing in the sunshine by day and enjoying the quiet of star studded nights. Until the people next door arrived. There we were having a glass of wine on the dock at sunset when a cargo van pulled up in the neighboring driveway. We watched in horror as the house filled with young men–college kids, we later found out. Within minutes the stereo was booming, “What is that?” I said. “Yela Wolf,” my husband told me. “Yellow Wolf?” I said. “No, Yela Wolf.” With that the whooping began. We had no idea that people still whooped, wasn’t that an eighties trend? Then the drinking games started; a whistle blow for every shot. As if some sort of mating call had been sent, kayaks overflowing with young women began to arrive at their dock, answering their whoops. The women immediately had drinks in hand and were queuing up for the game.  We had to do something.

My husband and I walked over to the neighbor’s dressed in our under armor. The kids were gathered around the pool, drinking. Heads turned and the whooping stopped as we stepped toward the pool. We removed our Depends and dentures and threw them into the pool. They retreated into the house. We then went back to our house and cranked up the Marantz receiver and blared our Bose 901’s. We played John Denver ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’, and sang harmony. The Carpenters followed with, ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’.  We had them retching. Then we went in for the kill. We blared Lobo, ‘Me and You and a Dog named Boo’. The last we saw of them, the van was pulling out of the driveway.

We saw, we conquered, we kicked their ass!

Admittedly, I am not tech-adept. I have considered looking for a 12-step group to help me with my problem: I am powerless over technology and my life has become unmanageable. You may think I exaggerate. To illustrate my point I will tell you a few things that happened to me over the holidays.

Every December my husband and I take the kids downtown for a night to celebrate his birthday. We stayed at the W Hotel. If you’ve ever been inside a W you know the style is modern–extremely modern. In our room, I was getting ready for the evening, my husband had gone out for a walk since getting ready for him takes less than five minutes. It was getting dark, so I attempted to turn on the lights. Seriously, I could not find anything resembling a light switch. After several minutes I located the switch for the bathroom. I then picked up the remote for the TV to listen to the news. Denied. The remote was nothing I’d ever used. I looked around for an instruction booklet, no luck. I gave up and went into the bathroom. The sink was a flat, shallow rectangle with an odd faucet; I turned the faucet every which way with no result: back and forth, up and down, no water. I brushed my teeth using my bottled water and then spit. The toothpaste sat in a puddle a foot from the drain. Who designs a shallow sink that does not allow rinsing? I used all of my bottled water rinsing the toothpaste from the bottom of the sink basin. Now I was out of water–and you know how much they charge for the bottled water in the room!

After dinner, my husband and I went back to the room, eager to go to bed. He had turned on the lights, so we could see. He promptly fell asleep as soon as head hit the pillow. I on the other hand love to read. The only light left on was my nightstand light, a long, glowing tube. After about an hour I put down my iPad and reached over to switch off the light. I could not locate a switch. I got out of bed and felt along the cord, finding nothing resembling a switch. I went to the wall looking for a wall switch, turned on and off all the lights except the one on my nightstand. I reached down into the fixture feeling for a light bulb to unscrew. No light bulb. This thing must run on solar power from another planet. After twenty minutes, I gave up and got back into bed with the light still burning bright. It took an hour or so but I finally fell asleep. Sometime in the the night I heard my husband get up and use the bathroom, he then turned off my light…

I was relieved when we arrived home from our night downtown. My husband took me by the hand saying, “I have an early Christmas present for you, and lead me into our bathroom. He spread his hand wide presenting our new toilet seat: the seat was plugged into the wall, it had buttons, green and red lights, even a remote. He proudly explained its functions: the seat is heated, it has a bidet feature, using the remote you can wash and dry your bum, it even has a turbo setting.

Great, I thought, now I can’t even use the toilet.

If you know of any 12–step technophobe programs currently available, please let me know.