One of the blogs I follow, Musings from a Tangled Mind, is occasionally a rant against some stupidity of daily life – usually on a subject I agree deserves a tongue lashing. I’ve not seen, there, my target today.
I am rarely able to nap during the day, no matter how tired I feel. This afternoon, I succeeded to drop off – and scarcely half an hour later my phone rang with an automated call from Walgreen’s Pharmacy, a reminder about refilling a prescription that:
1) doesn’t have refills on it, and
2) I never signed up to have reminders about.
I grew up in an environment which functioned largely without telephones at all. My recollection is that we were on a multi-party line in Washington DC, before my father entered the Foreign Service and we decamped to Vietnam in 1956. There – and later in Paris – there was a phone in our home, but it was solely for my parents and for official use only. I did occasionally use the Paris phone to arrange to meet a friend, but tying up the line to chat was forbidden, the cost considered prohibitive.
Returned to the U.S. for college, I lived in a dorm with one phone for the entire floor, or pay phones in the lobby for calling home. Again no habit of phone conversation developed. By the time I was out of school, married and living in my own space, the telephone had become a tool for necessary contact and nothing more. Thus, when I moved to New Mexico and into an area with no phone lines available, I was not disconcerted. In the one instance when my parents urgently needed to get hold of me, they had me located by the State Police, who came out to my house to deliver the message that I needed to call back East.
With time, I moved to a more developed area and met phone lines in place. I was still on a system that was small enough for us to give out our numbers with only 5 digits (Santa Fe was either 982 or 983 prefix, so my phone number was 33474, although one had to dial the initial 98). By the time I moved to the Las Vegas area, Santa Fe had 988 and 471 also in place, but Las Vegas had only 425 or 454. Five digit numbers remained the norm until the late 1990s.
Over the past 15 years the entire state has “upgraded” its land lines and sprouted a plethora of different cell company connections. In order to have service in my “second” house (the land line only goes to the main dwelling) I’ve signed up for T-Mobile, upgraded to a “smart” phone and now get calls via WiFi.
None of which justifies Walgreen’s disrupting my nap with an automated call to alert me it is time to refill a prescription!
Especially when I did NOT ask for that service. In fact, I’ve opted out of it twice already. Apparently, each time I fill a new prescription, the refill reminder is set for thirty days out, no matter what the content of the prescription says – and each new prescription requires a new opt out.
Lesson learned – no new prescriptions will be filled at Walgreen’s unless/until their system allows me to put a block on unwanted calls.
Which brings me to the true topic of this rant – the presumption that we all want/need to be connected all the time, that if we miss a call we are expected to return it immediately, that it is okay to repeatedly troll for business even after being told not to call again and even when the number dialed is on a national do not call list. We have to opt out of everything we don’t want, rather than being invited in and allowed to not participate unless we request inclusion.
A similar presumption underlies online tracking of preferences, of sites visited, etc. so that “ads can be tailored to meet your needs.” Except that no ad ever meets my needs, because I’ve learned to ignore them. They are an intrusion into my time and space, or into my spam folder. I do not have TV reception and, though I do miss the occasional drama series and a few PBS programs, the amount of advertising I thus avoid more than balances the small amount of worthwhile content that I forgo.
At what point did we cease of be people with brains, worthy of respect and entitled to be asked our preferences? How did I miss the turning point where personal space, rights to solitude and to privacy disappeared from everyday interactions?
I am not so “old fashioned” as to devalue the benefits of having a cell phone. I do appreciate being able to text and to email and reach out to people more quickly and easily than when I had to walk from my home in Lamy to the train depot to make that call to my parents, using the only pay phone in the village. I am so old fashioned as to mind that, with the advent of easy connection, has come a culture of disregard of – nay disrespect for – those who are on the other end of the connection.
Yes I realize there were people, shortly after Mr. Bell made his revolutionary invention, who said then what I’m saying now. They had it right, to some extent. Cultural norms do need to be adapted to changes in technology but not to the point of eliminating basic respect for individuals’ privacy and control of their home environments.
Just because you want to contact me does not mean I am obliged to be available to you!
There is a time and a place for communication. During church service in the morning, and again when I am napping on a Sunday afternoon is neither the time nor the place for Walgreen’s to pester me about a prescription refill for which I am not even eligible!
What’s that old parting line after a job interview? Don’t call us, we’ll call you?
If I want information I’ll seek it out. If I need a refill I’ll ask for it. If I intend to purchase an item, I’ll find the stores or the online sites with the items I’m interested in. I know my own mind, what I want and when I want it.
If you want my business, show me the simple respect of allowing me to initiate the contact, and to choose what reminders or new information I desire.
1eclecticwriter 
O.A.S.?
May 1, 2024I am woefully ignorant of the texting/social media abbreviations that increasingly occur in the crossword puzzles I used to enjoy as brain stimulation, but now too often toss aside in frustration as unsolvable unless I first take a course in Gen Z culture and textisms. On the other hand I immediately translated my first encounter with OAS – old age syndrome – in an email from a neighbor and friend of my generation even though she used it with minimal context, just saying she was “doing okay other than OAS”.
At about the same time, I interacted with the young woman whose debut website triggered my most recent post. Following from that recently posted reflection has been an extended meditation on the possible benefits of – and my strong inner resistance to – what is now often referred to as Swedish death cleaning.
(Inserted peeve: the thinks- it- knows- better- than- I- what- I -want- to -say built in grammar monitor is trying to tell me to write “following that reflection” when I do indeed mean following from as in triggered by and derived from, not just coming after in time. I hate the unavoidable, embedded, programmed critics which do not know nuance, nor formal grammar, but try to dictate how I express myself! )
Having undergone the challenge of sorting, selling, discarding or keeping my family belongings after my father’s death many years ago, I fully appreciate the kindness done to survivors by paring down beforehand. Facing the prospect of undertaking such a project myself I equally appreciate how reluctant I am to do so. At first I merely excused myself with the assessment that my energy levels weren’t up to the task (an aspect of OAS). With restricted energy and a goodly number of daily have-to’s, I want what extra energy I have used for more pleasurable activities than sorting and selling or discarding or keeping a lifetime’s accumulations. Having already lost much of what I valued as my personal history to last year’s wildfire, the items remaining seem almost vital to my sense of self.
Yet they are not. Viewed objectively, many of them simply occupy spaces that my eyes are accustomed to seeing them in. Especially the books I have read and will not reread, but keep like old friends, their covers and titles reminding me of the pleasurable time I spent with them in the past.
As I have lived with these conflicting motivations – to simplify and to keep – over the past several days an underlying perspective has emerged. I don’t think the issue is really a tension about things, but rather an inner argument about accepting or refusing to transition from one stage of life to the next. Since retiring something over three years ago, I have not enjoyed the anticipated opportunity to pursue interests that my demanding work life prevented. Covid did not help – nor did the emergence of unrelated health challenges most probably released by my reduction in stress-driven energy. (I relate to the recovering alcoholics who bemoan not being ill until they sober up.)
Looking back over these recent years of retirement, I see a person who achieved (survived) a great deal, coping not just with a health decline but two successive years of wildfire evacuations with extensive losses from the second one, while adding a stepson to my household, overseeing reconstruction of our home, and continuing my role as support to a husband focused on career advancement. Recently several people have described me as courageous. I have not thought that adjective to be descriptive of me – but perhaps they are correct? Is it courageous to push through the demands of each day while trying to be helpful to others whose needs are often urgently disruptive of my planned allocation of time and energy? Or am I just stubbornly refusing to let OAS define me?
I am aware of the often advised benefits to older people that they interact with younger ones to stay engaged and vital. For those with children and grandchildren this sort of interaction often comes naturally, especially when retirement is accompanied by relocation to be nearer to one another (the move usually also producing a paring down of things to the basic essentials). Having no children and hence no grandchildren, my recent acquisition of young step-children feels simultaneously appropriate to following this advice, but also intrusive and an interference with achieving the flexible and free “me” time I had anticipated as a retirement reward.
“Man proposes, God disposes.”
Now I wait, trying to do so patiently, for inner guidance on how to balance my desire to still be the younger version of myself, physically active and energetic throughout the day, meeting the needs of family – with also taking time for myself and my long postponed travel and new learning interests that were the promise of retirement. Often, so far, it seems that I am that courageous “doing” person from my 6AM rising until about 2 in the afternoon, when I become an exemplar of OAS, using the description to excuse resting on the couch, reading and extending my Wordle and FreeCell streaks. Not the image of myself I would choose – but apparently the one I need to accept.
For now, so be it.
Tags:adages, aging, courage, inter-generational interaction, retirement, self-acceptance
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