They say that when you hit your 40s, your life is half over. We prefer to think of it as HALF EMPTY. Our age has finally caught up with our outlook on life. Remember, it is possible to turn that frown upside down...but you might pull a muscle.
By Rick Kaempfer & Dave Stern
A story in the news a few weeks ago caught our attention. A woman decided to get back at her ex-boyfriend by putting a picture of his wife and her phone number on "adult" websites. Sure, she was arrested for harassment, but you have to give her credit for her creativity.
It got us to thinking about the ways breaking up has changed over the past few years thanks to technology. The whole dynamic is different now. You can judge for yourself if the new dynamic is better, worse, or about the same.
Then: Put all of her pictures in a pile, and set them on fire; watching her face melt, blacken, turn into ash, and evaporate into dust.
Now: Click, highlight, and delete her photos from your hard-drive.
Then: Driving past his house and throwing microwaved tomatoes at it.
Now: Sending a digital photo to his cell-phone—of you giving him the finger.
Then: Having to make one last visit to her apartment to get all your records back.
Now: Sending an e-mail asking her to e-mail your music back to you.
Then: Risking it all by listening to the radio after the break up, knowing that at any moment the DJ could inadvertently play “your” song.
Now: I-Pod, baby. Either delete “your” song entirely, or don’t use the shuffle feature for a few months—just in case.
Then: Driving by to see if her lights are on.
Now: Using a scanner to listen in on the baby monitor.
Then: Sending him a pizza at 3 in the morning.
Now: Sending him a computer virus at any time.
Then: Re-reading her love letters from a happier time, glossing over the bad times and only remembering the good times.
Now: Looking at your cell-phone bill and tracking the memory of each call…she loved me, she started to get irritated with me, she told me I was a jerk, she broke up with me, she told me that if I ever called her again she would get a restraining order.
Then: Reliving the grief a million times each time an unsuspecting friend asks how he is doing.
Now: Emergency IM session with a few hundred friends—all at once.
Then: You can’t even recognize her face on those deteriorating old “Private Polaroid’s.”
Now: “Ex-Girlfriend” websites can give her the kind of world-wide audience she never expected.
Then: Throwing all of his belongings onto the front lawn.
Now: Selling all of his belongings on E-bay.
Then: Using the remote code to check her answering machine messages while she’s at work, only to hear her new boyfriend’s voice on the machine.
Now: Checking her cell-phone voicemail and deleting messages from her new boyfriend before she can hear them.
See what we mean? The whole world of break ups has drastically changed. Also, it occurs to us some of the old classics have been destroyed by technology forever. For instance, in the old days you could call a million times waiting for that one chance to get her on the line. Now, with caller I.D, automatic callback, and privacy manager, you would be exposed as the psycho boy you really are.
Also, you can’t use her phone number when you contribute to a charity anymore. What’s the use of getting her number on every single telemarketer’s phone list when she’s on the national no-call list?
Oh well, time marches on.
