David McElroy

When I saw the elderly man holding onto a walker, I thought he was just out for a walk. But then I noticed he was bent over with an electric leaf blower in one hand. He was frail and needed the walker to stand, but that wasn’t going to keep him from his work. I was in his neighborhood to show a house, so I stopped to talk. He turned out to be a bright and lively 96-year-old who’s lived in the house for decades. He’s blind in one eye, but his mind is sharp. He told me he can’t see the grass well enough anymore to cut his lawn, but he keeps his driveway cleared of leaves. “If I didn’t do it, my wife would have to,” he joked. “She’s only 74, so I’m married to a young ’un and I like to keep her happy.” This delightful gentleman was another reminder that acting the way other people think you ought to at your age is often a matter of choice.

I’m stuck at my office at 9 p.m. on a Friday night. I can’t start my car. I can’t get to dinner. I can’t get home. And it’s all because a tiny piece of metal broke at the wrong time. I was heading out to show a house to a woman about 3 p.m. Friday when my key broke off in the ignition. It was annoying, but the car started, so I thought I would deal with it later. The car had other ideas, though. Now I’m waiting for a locksmith who’s going to charge me $165 to make a new transponder key. That’s frustrating, but everybody has faced similar issues. What’s the point? As the world gets more complicated, there are more and more points of failure. In my case, a piece of metal broke and that smashed a plastic device, somehow making a tiny chip no longer function. Modern life can be great, but this reminds me that we’re often better off keeping things simple, especially where technology is concerned. If something can break, it eventually will. Were we better off before technology got so complicated? As with most things, it’s a tradeoff.