Hit SEND Before it's Too Late

There’s a funny thing about kids these days. They have embraced digital technology like no other generation before them. It is interwoven into their lives and they probably would not be able to function without it.

Except for email.

For whatever reason, email – once the very pinnacle of sophisticated digital communications – is like a rotary phone to them. They don’t know how to use it.

Way back when the boys were little, I set all three of them up with Gmail accounts. Best dad move ever, I thought at the time. I would have been less enthusiastic had I known how little and how poorly they would use them.

If you email them something, you have to text them to tell them that you emailed them. If you do that, you have increased the chances from 0% to 11% that they will see your email. Unfortunately, even if they do see it, the chances are still 0% that they will actually read it.

I foolishly thought that high school would get them in the habit of using email effectively. I mean, after all, they were given school email addresses in order to communicate with their teachers. Once again, I was wrong. Ask any high school teacher how well the kids use email. They will just laugh and laugh.

Once again, I foolishly thought things would change with my eighteen-year-old when it was time to register for college. And once again, I was wrong.

He is going to University of Nevada, Reno in the fall, and yesterday was his orientation day. About two weeks ago we received an email about Orientation Step One. I saw that he and I had both received it, and I even mentioned it to him at the time.

When I inquired about it Monday night – the night before orientation – he said, and I quote, “Huh?”

When I sat down with him at his computer and had him look for the email, he immediately claimed that he had no idea where it was, and probably never got it. As I stared slack-jawed at his 999 unopened emails in his inbox, I suggested that he might try a search for the word “orientation.”

Miraculously, we found the email, which contained a detailed list of lots of things he needed to take care of about a week ago. He had a busy night.

The next day at UNR, one of the presentations for the parents was from the head of the student advisory department. They are in charge of helping the kids get all the classes they need in order to stay on track. She talked with us for twenty minutes, and about nineteen of those minutes consisted of begging us to somehow make our children check their emails.

Hmm…

So, parents of young children, this is your Immature Societal Email Nonfunction Disorder (I-SEND) Public Service Announcement. It’s obviously too late for our college freshmen, but you might still be able to salvage your children.

You need to get your kids in the habit of checking (and actually reading) their emails on a daily basis. It won’t be easy, but it can be done if you focus on the things they really want and need.

For instance, kids need food. Put a lock on the refrigerator and the pantry and email them the combination. Change the combination each day.

Kids love Wi-Fi. Change the code daily and have them send you an email each day to request their chore list. When they have replied with a list of fully completed chores, they can then send a separate email formally requesting the Wi-Fi code. If their email has no subject line, delete it without reading it.

Kids enjoy getting an allowance. Each month they must email you an allowance request. They can find their money after they complete a series of back-and-forth informational emails as you lead them through a scavenger hunt. Make it complicated. If you have more than one child and they use Reply All incorrectly, no allowance that month.

If you have teenagers that drive, the location of their car keys should be available only by email. Every once in a while, send them an email from you, but with poor grammar and spelling errors, starting with, “Dearist beloved Child.” Include an attachment that is a “pdf of the locality of you keys.”

The pdf should consist of the following one line of text: “You don’t get to drive today because you obviously need to stay home and learn which emails to flag as spam.”

Good luck out there, parents!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Brief History of Communications

Many, many years ago, people used to scribble messages and stories on the walls of their caves. That was great, but you had to go to their cave to see what they had to say. That was inconvenient and dangerous, because without advanced notice of the visit, they were likely to kill you when you entered their cave, and there was no way to give advanced notice, because you couldn’t send your own cave wall over ahead of time.

People eventually started scribbling notes on rocks and throwing them to other people, but that was also problematic because of the concussions and rotator cuff injuries associated with the longer/larger messages.

Finally, someone got smart and invented paper, followed closely by the invention of the carrier pigeon. But the pigeons were hard to train and only batted about .500 on delivery because none of the streets were named, and also hawks. There was also a poop-on-the-messages issues until someone figured out the messages should ride of the top of the bird instead of underneath, but the poop-on-the-recipient problem remained, so that program was short-lived.

It wasn’t long before Alexander Graham Bell took credit for a lot of work done by an Italian guy and “invented” the telephone, famously uttering the first words ever to travel across phone lines, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty.”

Americans instantly fell in love with the telephone, but within hours of the first network being connected it was rendered completely useless by teenage girls clogging up all the lines.

Then along came World War II and all the teenage girls were sent to work in factories, finally freeing up the phone lines. Radio technology had been progressing side-by-side with the telephone, with Nicola Tesla first demonstrating wireless radio message transfer. He then went on to pioneer the self-driving electric car. The radio was later patented by Gugliemo Marconi who had already made a fortune in cheese-covered pasta.

Radio waves were vital during the war, but there was a problem. The crafty Germans had figured out how to jam our radio signals, rendering our entertainment systems, and possibly more importantly, our torpedo guidance systems, useless. Thankfully, Austrian-born actress Hedy Lamarr had escaped her arms-dealer husband and moved to Hollywood ahead of the war. She went on to star in many, many movies that no one has ever seen, and she was quite famous.

In addition to being smokin’ hot, Hedy was also a genius. During the war, she and a music composer friend took it upon themselves to solve the problem of the Nazis being able to jam our torpedo guidance signals. Those crazy kids invented a radio guidance system that used frequency hopping.

“Frequency hopping?” you ask.

Yes, I don’t know what it is either, but apparently it was later the foundation for the Bluetooth and WiFi technology we know and love. Enjoy your digital device lifestyle? You can thank Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr. I am not making that up. We had to wait nearly five decades for something to come out of Hollywood that was even remotely as impressive, which, of course, was the movie Die Hard.

A few years prior to Hans Gruber falling out of Nakatomi Plaza, Al Gore invented the internet, and along with it, email. I first heard about “electronic mail” when I was in college in the early ‘90s, and I thought it sounded like the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of. Why wouldn’t you just call them, I thought. That is why I’m not a multi-millionaire.

Anyway, radio shows and my beloved phone calls enjoyed a long run of popularity until 2002, when Blackberry introduced the first phone that had a keyboard on it. Sure, the keys were far too small to actually use, but the idea was born. Finally, we could send emails from our phones! I mean, sure, you could use the Blackberry and the iPhones that followed as phones, but you could type on them!

The invention of the smartphone was the turning point in a communications timeline that has come full circle. We used to enjoy writing letters. Then we ditched that practice in favor of telephone calls until our telephones were able to write letters. The long letters known as emails gave way to texting as we grew more and more averse to actual phone calls.

Now, no one likes telephone calls anymore and everyone just writes short, incoherent texts to each other with atrocious grammar, zero punctuation, made-up words, a never-ending array of emojis, and no capital letters whatsoever.

We’re all the way back to basically texting each other cave painting scribbles.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why my wife and my children never answer my calls.

I’ll just leave them a quick voicemail…

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

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Group Text Hell

“I’ve never been held hostage, but I have been on a group text.”

If you own a smartphone, I’m sure that rings true for you. And if it doesn’t, then I’m terribly sorry that you were held hostage at some point in your life. I hope that’s not still going on!

I, unfortunately, have found the fourth level of group text hell. I am currently on a GroupMe with the seventh- and eighth-grade flag football teams. Not the parents. The actual seventh- and eighth-graders.

Like his brothers before him, Son Number Three won’t get a cell phones until high school, but I’m pretty sure every other kid on both teams has a phone and is on the GroupMe. The coach is young enough that he just set up the GroupMe and added the kids. I’m not even sure he was planning to communicate at all with the parents. For the first week of practice, I had no actual written or verbal proof that my son was even on the team.

I guess the coach is too young to realize that it used to be just the parents on the group communication, because we’re the ones that actually need to know the practice and game schedule.

Now, since all the kids have phones, they’re on, too. Here’s the first reason why that’s dumb: the parents still need to be on, because the last person you can trust to relay information correctly is an eighth-grade boy. My son cannot accurately explain to me a single solitary event of his entire day.

The second reason it’s dumb is that now the coach and whatever parents are unfortunate enough to be on the chat are stuck there with forty middle schoolers.

Allow me to illustrate the situation with a recent text string:

 

Coach: Our game this Thursday the 2nd is an away game. Please arrive at Johnson Middle School by 3:30pm for our 4:00 game time. Remember to wear your red away jersey.

Player 1: cool who are we playing

Player 2: johnson idiot

Player 3: hahaha

Player 4: ok

Player 4: are we home or away?

Player 1: coach said red jersey so were home

Player 2: we are away dude  we are only home when we playat our field idiot

Player 4: So white jersey?

Player 3: white jersey is home coach said red for away

Player 2: ya

Player 5: yep

Player 4: ok what time is the game? i need to find a ride. my mom is working i think

Player 1: the game is at 3:30 idiot you have to read coachs text

Player 2: the game is at 4 idiot we have to be their at 330 you have to learn to read hahahaha

Player 5: cool

Player 6: ok

Player 7: coach I dont want to play center I want to play a catching position I can catch you just have to see me

Player 2: dude you cant catch

Player 7: shut up

Player 4: hahahaha

Player 8: coach am I allowed to play in the game if I haven’t been to practice because I was sick but im not sick anymore?

Player 1: ya you should come. you can play

Player 9: What time is the game? who we playin?

[And on and on for another 24 texts]

Parent who didn’t start at the top of the 48-text string: Hi Coach, can you let us know the location and arrival time for this Thursday’s game, please?

Me on the couch listening to my phone beep like it’s a bomb about to go off: *just shoot me*

 

I’m starting to think it might be less of a headache if I just gave Son Number Three a cell phone and the car keys. Being off this GroupMe would probably be worth it.

I mean, he’s already thirteen. What could go wrong?

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Insincerely Yours, COVID

This is a message of hope, fellow COVID quarantiners, directly from my email inbox to you. If you thought you were in this alone, nothing could be further from the truth. Hundreds of thousands of people are here for you and me in these challenging times.

They work at places like your credit card company and your local auto dealership.

Why, just the other day I heard from the nice folks at Sunrun Solar, a company I ended up not buying our solar panels from, letting me know that their “top priority is the health and safety of our customers and employees,” and also that they are open for business.

Good to hear, in case I ever don’t need solar panels from them again.

Early on in the pandemic, Southwest Airlines contacted me to let me know “while many things are changing, our commitment to your Safety and providing travel flexibility has not changed.”

That’s a load off my mind, here at home, where I am required by law to stay.

TurboTax reached out to let me know their “hearts and thoughts go out to each and every one of you,” and also, “you have our commitment to continue providing you with the products and services you depend on.”

TurboTax is my rock in these taxing times.

Barclays got ahold of me to tell me that “staying in touch with you is important to us.” I’m pretty sure I don’t have a Barclays credit card. Nevertheless, they let me know that “as the situation with COVID-19 evolves, things are changing rapidly,” and wanted to be sure I had “all the information you need to manage your account as easily as possible.”

Shouldn’t be a problem.

Verizon Wireless sends me daily emails, checking in to make sure I know their commitment to me has never been stronger. They also selflessly let me know about all the money they have given to charities around the globe. We have teenagers, so I guess I should say, all of my money they’ve given to charities around the globe. To really show me they care, they’ve also been giving me free data that expires in a month.

Since none of us have left the protective umbrella of our home Wi-Fi signal since the beginning of March, free wireless data is super handy right now. For Verizon.

Our life insurance company, Legal & General America, shot an email over the other day to tell me that “as the global impact of COVID-19 evolves, we remain committed to the health and well-being of our customers.”

Umm, yes, I would assume so. You’re a life insurance company after all.

And what string of email platitudes would be complete without hearing from the fine folks at Lifetouch School Photography? Of all the emails I received, theirs was by far the most uplifting in its selflessness. “At Lifetouch, we love being a place where you can capture memories, stay connected to your loved ones, and build community. In the midst of COVID-19, and school closings, we will continue to be that place where you can share & connect.”

Yep, as soon as school closed, I immediately logged onto my Lifetouch account to maintain my sense of community connection. Their email had handy links to “some helpful articles on how to navigate this season together.”

Strangely, the links all went to Lifetouch’s own website, where the “articles” mostly encouraged me to take lots of pictures of my kids while I’m at home. Also included above and below each helpful season-navigating article were links that would allow me to purchase old school photos of my kids that I never asked Lifetouch to take in the first place, that they are conveniently keeping for me in their archives.

That was nice, but a thought kept occurring to me. I mean, I know they only sent me this email because they care deeply about my health and wellbeing, but why would a company that wants to take my kids’ pictures for me be encouraging me to do it myself?

And then I remembered… Oh, yeah, Lifetouch is owned by Shutterfly. It all makes sense now.

Like I said, this is a message of hope. We aren’t navigating these troubled waters alone. Your inbox is proof that plenty of people out there care deeply about you and your plans for your stimulus check.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

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Say What?

There have been a lot of times in advertising and communications when I thought it might have been better to have a professional in charge. Or maybe even a third-grader.

These are a few of those times:

I heard a radio ad looking for volunteers for a weight loss study to test a “revolutionary new pill.” They said, To participate in this study, you must lose at least ten pounds.

Hmm… Not going to be much of a "study," I guess.

Lipitor commercial: Claims about Lipitor are backed up by over 450 ongoing or completed studies.

Umm… How can you back up a claim with an ongoing study?

I was exiting a Chevron bathroom with the door offering the new "touch-free handle." The picture showed someone putting their arm through it and opening it with their shirt sleeve.

That’s great news for all you germaphobes out there, but I have a question. Can we really still call this giant thing a “handle?”

Saw a sign on freeway runaway truck ramp – the ramp designed to stop an out-of-control big rig. The sign said, "No stopping anytime."

Uh, doesn't that sort of miss the point of the ramp?

I was in the McDonald’s drive thru ordering an Egg McMuffin and the lady on the speaker said, “That's with Canadian bacon, right?” My first thought was, do you guys not know how to make it?

I saw an official US Army bumper sticker in Spanish. It said, Yo soy el army.

Umm... Que? One of my main hopes for the army of my country is that everyone who has a gun understands what the guy in charge is saying.

I saw a license plate bracket that said “VFW Life Member.”

Isn't that kinda automatic?

Heard an ad for a pharmacy that apparently specialized in pet medicine. Does your pet run and hide when it's time to take their medication? We can turn your pet’s medication into a cream that you can rub on their ears.

If I'm giving them their meds by rubbing it on their ears, doesn’t that mean I’m taking their medication, too? That can't be a good idea, can it?

I heard a radio ad for some place called JustGuns.com, advertising high-end shotguns. Whether it’s waterfowl, upland game, clay pigeons, turkey defense, or tactical…

The words “turkey” and “defense” were said far too close together, so it sounded like the JustGuns.com clientele were constantly needing to defend themselves against attacking turkeys. I am assuming that is not the case, but I can’t be sure where these people live.

On a Folsom Lake Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep ad, in the monster truck radio voice – Giant Inventory! If we don’t have it, it’s not in stock!

Uh… yes. That is exactly what that means.

Heard on a radio ad for RingCentral.com, which billed themselves as an offsite phone system service for small businesses to have professional voicemail, etc.

Set it up online at ringcentral.com, or call 1-800-ring-one. If our agents are busy, please call again later.

What??

Mac’s Plumbing radio ad - This month’s special… We’ll unclog any drain for $99 or it’s free.

Question 1 - Why would I pay if you can’t unclog it in the first place?

Question 2- Isn’t it normally “the same day or it’s free” or something like that? I don’t understand “$99 or it’s free.” Can I bargain with you? How about, $1 or it’s free? That way we wouldn’t have so much to figure out.

Radio spot for The Mutual Fund Store - Do you change your own oil? Cut your own hair? Do your own teeth cleaning? Of course not. Why would you do your own mutual fund planning…

I don’t think I’m their target audience, because I answered “yes” to all three.

Seen on the wall at our local electrical utility: Accident Prevention Awards.

How are these distributed? I mean, how do you really know that you prevented an accident?

Ad for Mercy Orthopedics  - If you are experiencing joint pain or limited mobility…

I have been experiencing limited mobility my whole life, but I don’t think it has to do with bad joints. I’m just slow.

Saw “INKNPPR” on a personalized license plate, with a license plate bracket that said, “It says, Ink and Paper.”

If you have to explain your personalized license plate with the bracket, I think you did it wrong.

On the local talk radio show, the news guy was teasing an upcoming story. “Prepare to be shocked.”

Can you even do that?

Driving down in the rural California central valley I heard an AM station weatherman refer to himself as “KMJ 580 meteorolist”

I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly the first time, but over the next few hours I heard the meteorologist mispronounce his own profession at least four or five times.

This last one is different, and probably falls under the category of “unintentional marketing,” and I swear every word is true. We were early to Son Number One’s teeth cleaning visit and hadn’t gone into the office yet. Sitting in the car, facing the dental office, we watched one of the hygienists arrive for work. She got out of her car and walked right in the front door carrying an 18-volt DeWalt power drill with a twelve-inch-long drill bit.

Took me fifteen minutes to catch up to my son.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Mrs. Magoo

I wanted to take this opportunity to do a small but vital PSA for the medical professionals out there – specifically all you doctors. I realize you spend an inordinate amount of time and money on medical school, and when you graduate and start practicing medicine, you’re all wicked smaht, as they say in Boston. But there seems to be one thing they’re not teaching you in medical school, and I wanted to share that with you today.

It seems like it would be obvious to everyone, but apparently not. The thing that some of you doctors are missing is the fact that almost all of your patients didn’t go to medical school like you did. That should make sense now, if you think back on it, because your classes were regular size, and didn’t include all the rest of the people in the world.

The end result of that fact is that you might need to explain the things going on in your head out loud to your patients, because your patients might not inherently know what a high blood CRP level means, for instance. Or what “wow,” means when you stick that cold thing in their ear and shine the light in there.

You might also want to take a second to put yourself in your patient’s gown, as it were, when prescribing medicine or advising on treatment, and think about some of the challenges your suggested course of action might present. Let me give you an example...

My wife was recently diagnosed with iritis, which is an irritation and inflammation of the irises (which, after I Googled it, turn out to be the colored parts of your eyeballs). We had to go to the ophthalmologist to get that diagnosis, because she had another issue going on with one of her eyes.

Besides being very bloodshot, her iris was stuck to the lens behind it, so her pupil wasn’t opening and closing properly, causing it to be almost rectangular instead of round. One eye looked normal and the other looked like a cat with a severe hangover. She’d been to the optometrist the day before for a routine visit, so she went back to have them look at the new problem.

They saw the funny shaped pupil and immediately opted for the worst possible diagnosis, guessing she had an eye-threatening condition that would likely leave her homeless, wearing a second-hand eye patch, with no friends and a bad case of mange.

(That might not have been exactly what the optometrist said, but it was something like that.)

The second opinion from the ophthalmologist was a little more upbeat. You get to keep your eye and your home and your friends. We just need to keep both your eyes dilated for a week while we put steroid drops in them to cure the iritis. Dilating your eyes will also un-stick the iris from the lens.

Hmm... Well, that does sound better than the mange scenario, but I have to keep my eyes dilated for a whole week? That’s going to make seeing a lot harder. OK, well, let’s do it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had your eyes dilated, but it’s not very fun. You can’t drive, light hurts your eyes, and everything is fuzzy. My wife is a high school teacher, so keeping her eyes permanently dilated for a week was interesting. I needed to drive her to and from work., and she wasn’t able to see anything that she, or anyone else, was writing on the board or on their papers, which made teaching much more exciting.

Her district didn’t have an extra Braille computer lying around, so reading her emails was a challenge at best. She could just start to see a little as the drops were wearing off, so she basically had a half-hour window right before her next scheduled dilation to get six hours of grading and computer work done.

It was a rather frustrating, tiring, headache-y, and overall non-productive week for her. Back at the ophthalmologist’s office for the follow-up visit and he tells her she needs to keep up the dilating for another week. After a very heavy sigh, she turned to me and said something about emails, or not being able to read some other thing.

“Well, you just need to get stronger readers. Then you’ll be able to see.”

I’m sorry, what?

“Yeah, you just need a stronger magnification on your glasses when your eyes are dilated, then you can see again. Just buy the strongest ones they have at the drugstore.”

You see, doctors of the world, this is what I’m talking about. We out here with non-doctor jobs have absolutely no idea how the eye works. We never studied it at the medical school we didn’t go to. You just assuming we would know something like that is really unhelpful. That was an offhand comment that really would have helped out a great deal... A WEEK AGO!

So, off to the Dollar Store we went. I found her a sweet pair of Mrs. Magoo glasses with a classy zebra print on the sides. She put them on and shouted, “Holy crap! I can see!” Since we were at the Dollar Store, no one even noticed.

We splurged and got her two pairs of zebra print glasses, just in case she took one of them off and couldn’t find them again in the blur.

Mrs. Magoo sure is a lot more pleasant to be around now that she can see! Thanks, Doc.

Is there anything else you want to tell me?

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!