Technical Incompetence

I got an e-mail from a person I was unsure about having met but kind of thought I recognized the name. It consisted of an invitation to join a web page thingy. curious about the message, I opened it and began to poke about and tried to find out about the person who sent me the original message.

I don’t know how much you know about these things but you wind up having to sign up to see what it is all about. Anyway, I signed up and since I never read all of the instructions and just try stuff out. I ignored a very important part of the message. Apparently, and I am still unsure how the question is posed, and I can’t even use the excuse that it was in Spanish since it asked what for my mother tongue. At some point in all of this it apparently asked me if I wanted to send a message to all of the addresses in my Gmail address book. I swear to you that I had no idea that this little stupid act could have such vast repercussions. Nor was I aware that I committed the tiny, insignificant act. Nor did I have a clue that I have 806 addresses in my address book.

Yes my friends, I sent an invitation to all of the 806 addresses out there. I have spent much of the past few days explaining to people I have not spoken to in fifteen years why they got an e-mail from me out of the blue with no message other than the invitation. Not many technophobes out there can compete with this one I would wager!
Now, there is an upside. A lot of those addresses have languished and I have not had contact with many people I care about and have been gone ten long years from many associations I once held dear. A lot of those people have written to ask, “What happened?” That has resulted in some more lengthy notes.

One comical response was a friend who told me that she was, “Technically incompetent,” and she deleted my message from her spam by accident. Irony has always tickled me. Happy for her, her technical incompetence saved her from my level of ineptitude. I had to laugh. What else are you going to do?