What is this common sense of which you speak?…

My retail job required training for a new system of purchasing merchandise. The Libby is a hand held device to swipe credit or debit cards. There’s no waiting in line at a counter.

Do I conjure a bag from thin air like the magician Chris Angel? What about the lady with eight pairs of panties and four bras? Do I hang the bras from my belt, pass the thongs back and forth or throw them over my shoulder while scanning the merchandise?

I complained to my spouse about the flaws in this system. It took four tries to get to the password screen. Libby’s slow and didn’t respond to my touch.

“Maybe Libby sensed you’re Old School.”

And what’s wrong with Old School?

The intent of the telephone was to converse with a person. I don’t need a telephone to look up the artist who sang Wild Wild West. The answer will come to me, eventually.

Old School doesn’t watch movies on a telephone either. We pay for cable service which ticks us off because we remember when television was free.

Old School will have better luck asking directions from a breathing person and not from a fictitious babe named Lola on GPS. Lola won’t know there’s a detour on Maple Street due to a water line break which will tie up traffic for over an hour and you really had to pee fifteen minutes ago. And that day didn’t end well. Thanks Lola.

We OS people read real books. Paper novels don’t require batteries or a charger. The murderer is…dead battery. A hot car or sandy beach won’t harm a real book. Thieves walk past an open book left unattended on a park bench. Try that with an

e-reader.

The OS people will be the last generation to have books written about them. Because we put the written word on actual paper, our letters and memoirs can be discovered in a box in some dusty attic. Our history can’t be lost with an accidental tap to a delete key.  The material will be fresh because our lives haven’t been previously tweeted, blogged, or face booked to the boredom of others.

Old School doesn’t pretend to have three hundred-twenty-seven virtual friends. We live in reality knowing that if four or five people tolerate our quirks and we theirs, your life is blessed. If you didn’t bore everyone with constant pictures and fifteen minute updates, you’d have four or five real friends.

Old School uses the US Postal Service. We recycle and are able to plant trees to make up for the Clearing House sweepstakes junk mail because we’re not sitting in front of a screen deleting one-hundred-forty-seven emails every day. While planting trees, we get our daily dose of vitamin D for free by spending time in the sunshine. We also exercise without paying for a gym membership and Pilates classes. Pilates translated is ancient form of torture. I didn’t need my phone to Google that.

If planting, harvesting, and then making my own salsa, spaghetti sauce, and sauerkraut makes me Old School, so be it. I can pronounce all the ingredients in my food.

Old School doesn’t do automated voice systems. Life requires more than press one for yes, two for no answers.

Does your non-emergency involve a burglary or a barking dog? Press one for yes, two for no. If your non-emergency involves a burglary, press…. I’m sure there’s no number for a cow standing in your garden munching broccoli. I need farmer Frank to get his beast before he eats the beans. The temptation of steaks on the grill may push me to harvest cow. Old School knows how to harvest meat too, if I only owned a forklift.

Although the automated voice system may work in my favor if my neighbor calls the non-emergency number. What number would he push for neighbor has dead cow hanging from swing set?

Don’t mention Old School like it’s a bad thing. Escape Club sings Wild Wild West. I do okay with Old School rules. Those rules give me a dose of common sense.