Low-tech Christmas is best

Christmas Future is a day away, and I have no idea what my wife has put under the tree for me.

Though I'm not one to pry through packages, I have a pretty good idea what she didn't buy me: anything more technologically complex than a ballpoint pen.

She hates buying electronics, and I hate trying to figure them out. High-tech is a waste of my time.

For instance, she knows better than to get me a navigation device for my car. If I used it in my car, I might as well acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with stopping to ask directions when we're on a trip -- and that, my friends, would be giving up.

Any man will tell you that if you become lost, there is no need to rely on a machine or a convenience store clerk; you simply have to keep driving. Eventually, you will run into a road that will lead you to a road that gets you back to civilization. Or, maybe, the road after that.

Neither will my wife give me satellite radio service for my car. I'm a fidget, continually punching buttons to change stations every time a stupid song or a commercial comes on, or adjusting the treble and bass. If I were given access to a hundred or two quality music stations, my fingers would wear themselves down.

My wife isn't likely to buy me an MP3 player, either. I would have to learn the complexities of downloading music, and that's something I haven't done since Napster was a youngster.

The funny thing is, I am the exact type of person for whom these technologies were developed:

- I have no sense of direction and can get lost on the daily commute to work.

- I can't tolerate what passes for local radio, with its loud commercials, moronic talk shows and unintelligible music.

- Having my good music in a portable player would free me from ever again being exposed to any act called a "boy band" or "diva" or "Li'l" something.

There is a fourth device that I am even more unlikely to receive: a fancy cell phone with a camera, text messaging, Internet access and a teeny-tiny screen no bigger than my patience gene that lets people watch TV programs and movies.

I already have an old cell phone, and it is work enough just dialing those little numbers or figuring out whether I've missed a call and, if I have, how to find out what the caller wanted of me.

If I want to take a photo, I won't use a phone. I will use my camera, which, by the way, is not digital. (I don't download pictures to the computer; I download them into the drop-off bin at the drugstore and buy a fresh roll of film.)

As for text messaging, who needs it? My phone has a transmitter and a receiver; I can talk and listen. Why do I need to contort my fingers by tapping the keypad? Hello -- it's a phone!

What's that, you say? I can watch movies on my phone? I don't think so. What text messages would do to my fingers, phone movies would do to my eyes. I grew up watching shows in theaters and at drive-ins, where the screens were tall and wide. Movies need to be shown big, not the size of an eyestrain. As for TV shows, I'm still lobbying my wife for a big-screen TV, not something even smaller than our current set. As for logging on, I have no desire to try to read the Internet by phone light.

If my wife were to buy gadgetry for me, she knows there are high-tech promises from my childhood that I'm still longing for:

- the Picturephone, which, if you believed 2001: A Space Odyssey, would be in our homes by now so we could watch people on large screens as we talk with them;

- the wrist radio, which would let me call the police commissioner from my watch whenever it's time to save the city.

Hint, hint, Honey.

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.