One morning, my Yahoo Mail wouldn’t load.

Instead, an odd error message flashed on the screen. I did some digging and found an 800 phone number that was supposed to be the Yahoo help desk.

Turned out to be a company trying to get money out of me, but the Yahoo account acted up for a couple of days. I worried my computer had been compromised because of the odd message. My neighbor, Arthur, is a computer whiz, and he offered to check out the system.

By the end of the day, he said the computer was fine but I should change from Yahoo mail to Gmail. My husband had been telling me to switch over for months, but like so many people, I didn’t want to give up the familiar.

Changing what’s comfortable isn’t easy.

I’m comfortable with the familiar.

Checking my email with Yahoo is familiar. There’s a shortcut on my desktop and I can get right to my email in seconds.

The books on the bookshelf are in the same order as when I put them there 10 years ago. I know where they are – why change that up?

The pictures I hung on the family room wall 12 years ago are still in the same place.

My computer sits on the same desk it has for the past 20 years. My son keeps telling me to get a more efficient set up, but that requires one word I try and avoid – change.

My hairstyle is familiar. When Rosie, my friend and stylist, was out for a few weeks, a different stylist cut my hair.

That was a disaster – I couldn’t style my hair the way she had, the cut was too short and the style required using a hair brush in ways I knew I’d never master.

Uncle Ben’s long-grain rice is the only brand I use because my grandmother and my mom used it. I see no reason to change what’s worked for two generations.

I’m not always such a stick in the mud. I change my attitudes and opinions when presented with new information. Being able to check information from a variety of sources is a challenge I enjoy.

But it looked like I was going to have to move out of my comfort zone and do something different with my email.

I grudgingly took my husband’s and Arthur’s advice. I went through all the steps to set up a Gmail account. Trying to hang on to something familiar, I tried using the same email name as I’d been using for the past 20 years.

No go.

Someone had already chosen that name. The names Gmail suggested were too long and, let’s face it, I’d never remember those. After 10 minutes, I finally typed a password Google found satisfactory.

Then there was the next step of setting up a password. I’m awful with passwords. Super secure ones are too long for me to remember and require upper case, lower case, symbols and numbers.

But after 15 minutes, I submitted a password Google found safe and acceptable. I wrote it down and haven’t told Arthur or my husband I committed that email faux pas. I know I’m prone to forgetting passwords, so I followed a familiar routine, hence the reason the password is written down in a book.

When I finished setting up the Gmail account, my husband asked if I wanted a tutorial on storing documents in the cloud and using One-Drive.

Overload, was the word that flashed in my brain.

Until I get an error message or I’m forced, I’ll follow my familiar routine of saving things to an external hard drive and the desktop.

My brain’s tired. I think I’ll pop a tape in the VHS recorder and relax.

 

Denise’s email is dhadams1955@yahoo.com. Yes, I’ll still check it. Old habits die hard. This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

Many scientists believe strong nuclear force is the most powerful force in the universe. Others believe gravity is the most potent while some would put hurricanes and avalanches at the top of the powerful category.

Albert Einstein said that compound interest is the most powerful force. If you started saving money at an early age and cash it in after you retire, you’ll believe the genius was correct.

The romantics among us believe love is the strongest emotion while the pessimists would argue that hate is powerful and dangerous.

These are sound theories. However, there’s something more powerful than keeping planets in line or making sure the sun stays millions of miles away.

I believe guilt is the most powerful force in the world. Guilt can make the strongest person cave under pressure. When used effectively, guilt can make us into better people.

Guilt was one of the strongest tools I had as a parent. If one of the boys hit the other, I had the standard reply.

“You hit your brother,” I’d say to the guilty party as the innocent one cried loudly and without taking a breath. I’d shake my head in disappointment while consoling the wailing child. I’d look straight in the eyes of the offender and ratchet up the guilt.

“Look how bad he feels. Now tell him you’re sorry,” I’d say.

Usually that philosophy worked. That is until the day the hitter said they didn’t feel bad about hitting their brother.

“He deserved it,” was the answer. Out went that line of guilt shaming because guilt only works if you feel bad about what you did.

When they were older, instilling guilt became a little more sophisticated. But I had the guilt grand master close by – my grandmother. She’d cook a huge meal, fill a plate to overflowing and then put it down in front of me. She’d sit next to me, point at the plate and smile.

“Looks good, doesn’t it,” she’d say. “I made all of this for you.”

The food looked delicious, but she and I both knew there was no way I could eat everything she’d heaped on the plate.

“I can’t eat all of this,” I’d say, trying to weasel out of all that food. She’d dab at her eyes.

“You don’t like what I fixed you,” she’d say. I’d reassure her I did and then she’d look at the plate and at me. I’d end up eating everything on there, just so she wouldn’t feel bad.

My mom updated the guilt about food with a line we knew was coming if we turned our noses up at what she’d fixed.

“There are starving children in China who’d be glad to eat this,” she’d say. That worked until my brother talked back one night.

“Well, then, they can have this,” he said. Let’s just say he was one of those starving children because he went to bed without any supper that night.

I tried to soften the guilt for my boys, but I’d been trained by the very best. I’d find myself mouthing words I couldn’t believe were coming out of my mouth, but there they were.

“I slaved for hours in front of that stove and you tell me you ate a taco over at your friend’s house so now you’re not hungry!” was one of my lines. “Fine, then, I’ll just throw it away.”

I never could throw away perfectly good food, so I’d just put it in the fridge for lunch the next day. Still, I never could tell them that – the guilt was so much more fun to dish out.

The romantic in me believes that love is the strongest force and will always win out over hate. Gravity keeps the universe in check and Mother Nature is savagely powerful.

But as a person who’s dished out guilt as well as crumbled underneath it, guilt is the ace of hearts in the deck of life.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Social media is having a field day with comedian Chris Rock’s Netflix special “Selective Outrage.”

Every review I’ve read about the hour-long show has zeroed in on the last eight minutes. That’s when Rock addressed the big incident – Will Smith came up on the stage at the Academy Awards and slapped him.

Netflix viewers came to hear what Rock would say about Will Smith. They wanted blood. They wanted vengeance.

But I tuned in because I’ve seen most of Chris Rock’s stand-up specials, and they were raunchy but funny.

As the special progressed, I stopped wondering about “the slap” and was, instead, intrigued by a couple of stories Rock told.

One was when Rock’s daughter, Lola, snuck out on a high school field trip, went to a bar and got drunk with some White friends.

The school threatened to expel them. The parents banded together and said they were going to get lawyers and sue the school for not supervising their daughters.

Then Rock overheard his daughter and her friends laughing about the incident and how they’d all get out of it. Without telling her or his daughter’s mother, Rock drove to the school, found the dean and told him to expel his daughter.

The dean complied. Rock said his daughter had to write letters and essays to other high schools to find admittance.

She did it.

When it was time to apply for college, she had to write more essays and took responsibility for her actions. She wrote those as well.

Today, she’s in culinary school in Paris doing extremely well.

But that story wasn’t in any review I read. Nor was the story he told about his mother having to go to a vet for dental work when she was a child because White dentists wouldn’t treat Black children.

I thought a lot about those two stories and why the media didn’t at least mention the incidents about the women in his family. For me, those were powerful stories, ones worth hearing and understanding.

But people didn’t tune in to hear Chris Rock talk about parenting or prejudice. They wanted to hear how he was going to get even with Will Smith.

Sensationalism is what gets people to click on articles which generates income. Take a look at the headlines on your news feed. There are certain phrases webmasters consistently use to get you to click on their story – “tragic mistake,” “baffled viewers” and “shoppers swear by this” are a few of the most common ones I see.

Probably a headline promoting how to handle the hard things in parenting wouldn’t generate the same clicks as “A serial murderer lived on my street and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

We’re being led down the path savvy marketers and artificial intelligence wants us to travel. They wanted us to watch the Chris Rock special to find out how he felt about Will Smith. They completely bypassed the first 50 minutes of the special to get to the “juicy” salacious, gossipy part.

And even then, they thought Rock was too easy on Smith or he deserved to get slapped. Our society has gotten quite good at negativity, criticism and sinking to the lowest common denominator.

I wouldn’t put Chris Rock down as a parenting expert. But I would put him down as someone who watched his mother overcome prejudice and poverty.

I’d also say he made some tough decisions to ensure his daughter grew up taking responsibility for her decisions.

Too bad he only gets credit for the “big slap” at the Oscars.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

When I was a young girl, I thought staying up all night long was the ultimate grown-up privilege.

As a teen, I routinely went to bed at one or two in the morning. At the time, it seemed like I’d be missing something if I didn’t stay up.

As a grown up, I know the answer – what I missed was sleep.

The years after the age of 50 are supposed to be the “golden years.” Ads in magazines picture laughing silver-haired couples skiing, drinking wine in a beautiful location or relaxing in an tropical paradise.

Reality is a little bit different.

For many, the golden years are spent in doctors’ offices, trying to figure out why the aches and pains we shrugged off for decades now affect our daily living.

No more eating burgers and fries without a care in the world. We know about bifocals, dentures, walkers, grip bars in the shower and how to navigate the unbelievably complicated Medicaid system.

Many people are able to do all the activities they did when they were in their 30’s, and their activity level is right up there with the young ‘uns.

They hike, go mountain climbing, and ride motorcycles without a care in the world. I marvel at pictures of people my age who are still canoeing down treacherous rivers while so many of us are cautious to a fault.

Even for those who are reluctant to go zip lining, there’s quite a few benefits for those on the other side of 50 and we don’t have to take karate classes to live it up.

First, we don’t care about what other people think.

Let’s start with our hair. Want to go all grey? No problem. We’ve made the color gray sound exotic. It’s platinum, silver or white.

Want to wear black socks with sandals? Go ahead. Nobody cares and nobody’s looking. In fact, if you want to wear support hose with shorts and sneakers, go right ahead. At our age, we’ve learned that comfort and practicality is what counts.

Want to play music loud? Go right ahead. Crank Neil Diamond and Paul McCartney up and sing along. Those guys are cool and retro now, so you’ll fit right in with the younger crowd.

We’ve mastered the best way to handle the whiners and complainers. When I was younger, I’d gripe to my friends about what this one had done to me or that one had said.

Not anymore.

I don’t care if they like me or don’t like me.

They want to whine and complain? I’m sorry they don’t have any other way to cope with life other than to gossip or talk about people behind their backs. I thank the heavens I’m not that negative or petty.

Don’t feel like cooking? Not a problem. The kids are grown, and Door Dash or Grub Hub bring us what we want to eat without our having to leave the recliner in the living room. Best of all, most of us are perfectly content with leftovers.

Despite the things my knees refuse to do these days, life is great. I can sing, think, dream, laugh, cry and celebrate. I can get where I want to go, whether it’s walking or driving.

I’ll never read “War and Peace,” I won’t learn how to macrame, nor will I attempt bungee jumping. I read what I want to read, attempt new arts and crafts if they look like fun and refuse to try and prove anything to anybody.

These are the golden years. There’s a little bit of tarnish in some spots, but all in all, life is good.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.