No Matter Your Age, You Still Have to do Chores

Out of the many chores I had as a kid the one I hated most was chopping wood. I had to use an ax, a maul and a sledge to convert a pile of 18-inch logs into neatly stacked cordwood ready for use in the wood stove. It is a laborious chore. My father knew of my hatred for splitting wood, and thus it became one of his favorite punishments. I always seemed to be in some sort of trouble with him.

Even when I wasn’t in trouble, there was still wood to split, grass to be mowed, fences to be painted, and finding Becky Thatcher in the cave. I’m kidding about that last part, but I am not joking when I say that I became my father’s auto mechanic as well, tasked with such things as 58-point oil change services, car washing, brake jobs and a host of other things. Do you know anyone who has changed the universal joint on the drive shaft of a 1978 Ford F-150? Or scrape the crud off a distributor cap? Or change the tie rods and shock absorbers? I’d done all those things before I was 17.

I suppose I probably should thank my father for foisting these chores upon my brothers and me. We are all pretty good at fixing things and the physical labor made us all pretty stout. Still, I have a strong dislike for chores. As a kid, I couldn't wait until I grew up because I wouldn’t have chores to do anymore. Imagine my surprise and disappointment in learning that not only do I labor over the same chores, but now have new, unpleasant, adult chores to do. It being a Sunday, I'm ignoring them right now, although there is laundry in the washer and a stack of shirts to iron. I don't mind those chores so much, I do enjoy wearing clean clothes.

There is another level of adult chores that no one ever looks forward to doing, like filing an insurance claim, buying a new set of tires, or paying bills. Ugh.

It’s those adult chores that are truly annoying, but are costly if they are not done.

Here's an adult chore I’ve been procrastinating over during the last week or so: I have been getting speed camera tickets featuring a car I sold back in January. I messed up and forgot to take the plate off the car after the guy handed me $800 in cash in a grocery store parking lot. I tried calling him, but, big surprise, he didn’t return my calls.

So now, I have to try to get three tickets dismissed. I have the proof it wasn’t me in the car and furthermore there is the bigger issue that this chucklehead is driving around with no valid vehicle registration or insurance. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d drive a little more cautious if everything was not up to snuff on all my car paperwork. I know the problem will be fixed and I will not be paying off these tickets. The thing is, I have to fix this or it could turn into a larger issue that I don’t need. That means I have to enter into a combination private-governmental bureaucracy, one of the most frustrating to deal with. This will take several phone calls and possibly a few emails to complete, but I am offended that I have to spend my time on this issue.

This delay in getting that fixed is because I’ve been dealing with another adult chore – buying a new phone.

There is still a part of my brain that thinks buying a phone is as simple as going to Walmart, buying one and plugging it into the wall. We all know that world is now lost to time, but I don’t think my subconscious got the memo. We call these devices we carry in our pockets “phones,” but that function might be the least used. Now we text and it somehow feels perfectly natural. By 2020, more than 75 percent of the world’s population had a smart phone. So I don’t need to tell you all its functions because that would be stating the obvious. They are a part of our lives now, an extension of who we are as individuals.

You can tell a lot about a person just by observing the relationship they have with their device. Conventional wisdom says that older people think the younger generation do nothing but look at their phones. That may be, but from my observations, phones equally distract every generation. If there is one thing I’ve learned from postings on reddit, it’s that people put the most personal, private things on their phone and the wife/husband will see something distasteful.

I can understand that people have strong relationships with their phones and many see them as a status symbol. It is something that anchors them to a community of sorts, while ignoring the one their bodies actually live in.

I suppose you probably think that I’m one of those weirdos who has an old school flip phone from 2011. I’m not. I find my phone to be an amazing instrument and a powerful tool. I like having a pretty decent camera with me wherever I go. I love Google Maps and I’ve played a lot of games of Risk while waiting for something. I like reading articles on Wikipedia.

I just don’t panic if I forget where I put it and, according to the tracking device on my phone, I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes on my phone every day. The first time I saw that, I was shocked how much of my time I spent looking at that screen. Then I discovered that it wasn’t much at all. I’m not bragging or trying to imply that I’m better than anyone else, it’s just that there are so many wonderful things to see and do in the world that I prefer over looking at a screen.

So, you could probably imagine that I’m the type of person who would see the process of getting a new phone to be a chore. I know several people who were more excited about me getting a new phone than I was.

I'd known for a couple of months that my old phone hadn't been feeling well. It was starting to drop calls and coverage. I mean, I had apparently been paying for 5G or whatever, but it was a bit too much for my device’s circuitry to handle. Google Maps sometime talked to me and sometimes didn't despite all the settings positioned correctly. The phone’s hardware was aging out and it was only a matter of time before it became useless. This is something about modern life that bothers me because it seems so wasteful. I try to hang onto things as long as I can, which is why I had a seven-year-old iPhone 8. Apparently, I should have upgraded a long time ago.

Revealing I used an iPhone 8 usually was met with amusement. Someone actually told me that my phone belonged in a museum. I was more concerned with it ending up in a landfill. The laughter at my archaic iPhone didn't hurt my feelings; I’d never much liked it. The stupid lightning connecter sucked and I didn’t care to be tied so closely to Apple Corp. That said, I did like the camera, but not much else. Despite my indifference to the phone itself, I hung onto it because it did everything I asked it to.

As it was dying I knew that I was heading toward the adult chore of getting a new one. For some, this might sound like fun which ends with going home with something new and shiny. I like that as much as anyone, but somehow I knew I would be paying more than I had been. I was feeling the same kind of dread I get when shopping for a new bed or refrigerator; experiences where I always feel I'm getting ripped off.

Part of such a chore is research. You have to know what you need, what's available, and what it’s going to cost. In this respect, I was at a huge disadvantage. In the more than 30 years that I have used cell phones, I had only bought two, and those were burner phones that I got at Walmart. I’d always had company issued cell phones, in which the device a number was issued to me and paid by the company for which I was working. I liked this set up for obvious reasons, but I never really had to shop for a phone. That’s how I ended up with the ancient iPhone, which has been reasonably new when it was issued to me.

When I had left that job, I offered to buy the phone but it was given to me as long as I transferred the service to my name. So, at the tender age of 58, I was forced to buy a cellular plan. Now, a short two years later, I found myself searching for what I hope is the last device I will have to buy (although I have a suspicion this will not be the case).

I did my research and finally ended up with a new device. I’ve been spending the past week or so trying figure out its functions and turning off all the extras the phone company decided I might need. The device itself is okay, but it seems like every time I touch it an advertisement pops up or an app wants to know my exact location.

As it is, that is an adult chore than has been checked off my “To-Do” list and I have to move down to the next item, which I can see is taking care of those speed camera tickets.

Ugh.