Buy it and you'll learn, I thought, but never did

I made a huge mistake years ago when I refused to learn how to use e-mail at my work. I persisted in communicating using those little pink memo papers long after most of my co-workers were using their computers. I have been behind, way behind, the curve ever since.

I managed for years in Hawaii with only a landline telephone and an answering machine. Mobile phones were starting to be seen but they were heavy, as big as a shoe box and far from common so I could ignore them. As they got smaller and more people had them, I looked the other way. Fiddle dee-dee, this isn't for me. Call me at home and leave a message if you want to talk to me. I'm just an old-fashioned kind of girl.

Just before I came to China I admitted that I probably needed a computer. I took several courses at the local college in Hawaii to acquaint me with it and promptly forgot all I learned. In China I managed, somehow, after many episodes of trial and error, to send and receive e-mail, to write stories on Word and to Google information. That was the extent of my abilities for several years.