I’m stumped!

I walk into a room and turn on a light. I stop for a minute and I’m speechless. I’m streaming a movie on my laptop. My phone is open to a chat I’m having with a coworker and I have music playing in the background. I wonder how I explain any of this.

I’m stumped.

Earlier in the day, I happened to watch a stand-up comedy bit by comedian Nate Bargatze from close to ten years ago when he joked about how ineffective he would be if he ever went back in time. He joked that he wouldn’t be able to explain anything that he had seen.

I’m right there with him. I’m not a Flat-Earther, an Anti-Science guy, or a vaccine denier. I don’t see a conspiracy behind every twist and turn in the road. That’s to say that I’m Pro-Science. I just don’t think I could explain any of it. I would start off trying to bring up some complicated scientific discovery and end it by saying, “well, it’s magic.”

I imagine going back with Marty McFly in Back to the Future and failing miserably at explaining streaming movies and satellites and computers. Heck even Marty had problems explaining the jazzed up version of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” at the high school dance. How am I going to have any luck explaining Rap or Hip Hop music? I’m a goner for sure.

I think about all the great back in time movies that I’ve watched over the years: Back to the Future; Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure; The Time Machine; Kate & Leopold; The Time Traveler’s Wife; Time after Time; Edge of Tomorrow; and so many others. They all show that knowing a little a bit about how things work and some History can really come in handy.

Me? I would be in trouble.

Here’s how it go: So Brian, tell us about this tablet or smart phone that you’ve been talking about? “Um, yea, those big black boxes on the wall or nightstand, that ring when someone is calling you? Well, we don’t use them anymore. Pay phones, yea, they’re a dinosaur too. What’s replaced them? Well, these things we carry in our pockets. They’re really cool. They’re kind of like a phone and an encyclopedia. But I can’t explain how they work for the life of me.”

Ugh.

It’s really kind of depressing. I live in the modern world. I try to stay up on all the different technologies, but I can’t explain them for the life of me.

“Oh, I turn on my phone and I open this app, and it does whatever it does and I get to see my friend’s pictures of his road trip to San Diego.” Oh, yea, that sounds really smart.

I would look like a raving idiot. They’d put me in a straight jacket!

Do those yellow For Dummies books? You know what I mean: Personal Finance for Dummies or Chess for Dummies. If they do still exist, maybe there’s a version of Modern Technology for Dummies book? If not that book, than I would need to go back in time with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the American astrophysicist, or Bill Nye, who hosts a science education television show, to have any success.

Now if I could just explain the abacus. Maybe that’s a good place to start.