Technology Crossing Generations

Last night another milestone in the Himes' House - teaching Pop to text. We (and our cousin) taught Gram over the break, and she has graced us with a few funny texts. Of course, Gram is probably the hippest Grandmother on the planet - has been IMing for years, email is old hat, teaches computer courses, has a digital camera and has inquired about blogging... Now Pop, that's another story. See, nearly every day he picks the kids up from the bus after school to bring them home. But because of schedules, they call each other every day to confirm. Between the noisy bus and Pop's hearing challenges, they have trouble communicating. So the kids said, "Why don't we just text you?!" (we all have unlimited texting - pop is on our plan, so he has it, too) HA. He can read them, but responding is the challenge. After much beeping and key punching and trying "Quick text" we finally came up with a solution: we sent 1 text from Pop to each kid saying, "OK" and 1 saying "NO." So all he has to do to respond is find the right message and hit, "resend." Problem solved! Now Pop says he just needs to see if he can remember how to find the resend button when he is on his own. Yes, we are dragging the grandparents kicking and screaming into the next century - very cute.