Talk or Type? a Phoney Question.

Okay, so here's ANOTHER "You Know You're Getting old When . . . " cartoon. Folks are writing that they want more of these.

Do you?

Test Yourself

Test Yourself.

the Tip-Off

Back in the seventies I did a Dry Bones cartoon series in the Jerusalem Post called "You Know You've Been Here Too Long When . . ." Those cartoons pointed out the various amusing ways that we newcomers had adjusted to living in our new country. I'm now adjusting to living in another strange new country, "old age".

So I thought of "You Know You're Old When . . . ".

Smart Phones, Dumb People

In America it is apparently not uncommon these days to see drivers resting a BlackBerry on top of the steering wheel while using their thumbs to tap in a text message. Legislators across America are debating and developing "anti-texting-while-driving" laws.

A recent study by America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute shows that 80 percent of car crashes involve some form of driver distraction occurring within three seconds before the vehicle crash. According to the study,the principal distraction that led to vehicle crashes include:

•Cell phone use.
•Reaching for moving objects inside the vehicle.
•Looking at an object or event outside of the vehicle.
•Reading while driving.
•Applying makeup." -more

Life in the 21st Century is becoming more and more bizarre. That's why I fantasize about time travelers returning to 1958 with reports about what it's like here in the future.

Physical Dexterity

When I was a schoolboy in the "old days" in America I, like the kid in panel one of today's cartoon, was forced to learn "penmanship". And what we dutifully practised was called the "Palmer Method".

"In America, the idea of a prescribed form of handwriting was championed by Austin Palmer over a century ago. While working for the Iowa Railroad Land Company in the 1880s, he observed that clerks doing ornamental penmanship "flourished all capitals with a free-arm swing, with the arm completely off the desk." They used an entirely different movement to write normally. "The most swift and tireless penmen appeared to keep the arm on the desk at all times and formed their letters with little or no motion of the fingers — a free and tireless style of penmanship." Palmer realized that his "muscular movement writing" was something that could be taught and that advertising his "system" could help him to change the world — that everyone's handwriting could be efficiently executed while basically looking the same. There need not be confusion in the world because of a messy scrawl! The Palmer Method of Business Writing sold one million copies in 1912. By 1927, the year that Palmer died, 27 million Americans had learned the Palmer Method." -more

* * * I got a fancy new phone today. It's like the one that the kid in the last panel is using ...and I haven't written a "proper" capital Q (see the chart above) in thirty years! I wonder what Miss Batzel (my first grade teacher at P.S. 67 in Brooklyn) would say.