#81: Learn To Type With Your Thumbs

Old people behavior of which I am guilty: Holding your phone at arm’s length (so you can read the numbers and letters, natch!) and then typing with your index finger.

No no no no. You’ve got to pretend your index finger doesn’t even exist. Forget the middle, ring, and pinky fingers too.

The young way to dial your phone or to text or type on your BlackBerry or iPhone is with your thumbs. Yes, all with your thumbs.

There are online guides to thumb-typing, like this one by Mark Rejhon. Following this method would probably work, but I’m too impatient and probably even too old to read past step 2 in the directions.

Instead, I’ve been entertaining myself by typing away as fast as I can (not fast) with my thumbs on my new iPhone (yes! I’m so cool!) and then chuckling over what mistakes I make and how the iPhone corrects them. Except sometimes the corrections are funnier than the mistakes.

The other night I was trying to type “there’s no fucking way….” except what showed up on the screen was “there’s no ducking way…..”

So I typed it again, but this time with my index finger, checking old people-style to make sure I was hitting the right keys. That’s when I saw that it was the iPhone that was automatically changing my fucking to ducking. Not so cool!

Here’s a demonstration of iPhone thumb-typing, extolling the virtues of the autocorrect feature. But this guy is obviously not telling the whole ducking story:

, Apple

#s 75-80: How Not To Act Old Around Your Babysitter

You and your babysitter, you’re a team, compadres, right? Riiiiiiiight. It may have occurred to you, somewhere in the years you’ve been employing childcare, that your sitter is a lot closer in age to your nine-year-old than she is to you. You may think that you’re both the adults, in league against the kids, but you’re wrong.

Jen Singer, the creator of MommaSaid.net and author of You’re a Good Mom (and Your Kids Aren’t So Bad Either), offers these tips for not acting (too) old around your babysitter:

1. Text your babysitters. They don’t do phone calls, and they really don’t want to talk to you, especially when you call them while they’re out with friends.

2. Know what the hell Twitter is. A plus: Actually use it to keep in contact with your sitter and children.

3. Do not attempt to impress your sitters with modern lingo, such as referring to your husband as your “baby daddy.”

4. Resist the urge to point out that the ring tone on their cell phone was originally recorded by Prince, whom you saw in concert while wearing leg warmers and a Flashdance style dress.

5. Don’t lecture them on how the M in MTV used to refer to “Music.” You know, back when Prince was hot and so were you.

6. Try not to appear as though you’ve just been punched in the stomach when your babysitter tells you that when you got married in 1991, she had not yet been born.

#21: Don’t Leave A Message

This is a weird one, contributed by my 18-year-old son Joe (see #2). Only old people leave voice mails, says Joe. Young people, accustomed to communicating by cell phone vs. land line, figure that the other person will see their number in missed calls and return the call if they want or need to talk. Urgent message? Send a text.

That long involved voice message you left for your child or your 12-year-old doctor? They won’t listen to it.