It's an okay book. There are lots of reviews on the back about how hilarious it is, but mostly it's kind of whimsical and sad. In the book, Rodney retires to a Florida retirement community when he's only 29. He attempts to see what it will be like when he retires. There are a few funny chapters here and there, but mostly I get caught up in the depressing existence of his roommate, who has a parrot that immitates everything and several cats, none of which she's supposed to have.
In the retirement community, he runs into shuffleboard enthusiasts, a 93-year-old retired comedian, WWII vets, volunteer policemen and others. It's kind of sad that he spent this much time kind of pretending to be interested in them when he clearly wasn't. That kind of bothered me.
The book got me thinking about when I was in my second round of college in 97 or 98, I was taking a photojournalism course for my Journalism Graduate Studies program with an emphasis in news editorial. One of our projects was that we were assigned a project for one of the magazines the department put out. This particular magazine dealt with the issue of aging, so my assignment was to follow around a band that goes to nursing homes and plays shows for them.
Naturally, I was very curious about this band. They called themselves Milo and the Clefs. Milo was a 70+ year-old-man who played several instruments (mainly the saxophone). Playing with him were a rag-tag group of musicians who played the accordian, the Clarinet, the keyboards and the drums. They mainly played abbreviated versions of such standards like "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "Little Brown Jug" among others.
Long story short, I took pictures of them on two separate occasions. I thought the pictures were going to turn out well. I mentioned to Milo that these pictures were going to be used in a class project that will be published in the fall. In the meantime, I was going to be putting these pictures on the web.
Milo stopped listening, paused and confusedly asked, "The web?"
I kind of smiled and said, "Yes, on the world wide web."
"World wide web? What's that?"
"That's where you type in a web address (blank stare) into a browser (blanker stare). Then a web page comes up (even blanker stare)."
"A browser you said?"
"Right. A browser. You see, there are Internet browsers on computers (I'm seeing the blank stare again.) in which you can access the world wide web."
"What's on it?"
"Well, when you get to a web page... Let me back up... A web page is a... page... that has words (still with the blank stare) and pictures... on it."
"Why is it on a page?"
"Umm... Well... We can put these on a web page... That way, anyone can see these photos... if they have Internet access and a web browser."
(Milo looks utterly confused)
"Look," I say. "I could write down the web address of the project for you. I already have a lot of pictures on it already. The address is http... colon... backslash... backslash...(I pause because Milo stops looking confused. He looks like he's given up trying to figure out what I'm talking about).
"Umm... I could tell you how to get online if you want."
Milo laughs, "That's okay. We'll see them if we see them."
It was like when my Dad had to take a computer class for his job. Here he was, a 60+ year-old-man, who had never touched a computer in his life, and he was expected to learn this new piece of software. He didn't know how to use a mouse. He didn't know how to open folders. He didn't know how to open documents. How do you explain that to someone who has never seen it?
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