How an 85 year old embraced technology

There’s a group of people known as ‘progress deniers’. Much like the group who belong to the ‘flat earth society’, says my mate Barney. The ones that believe that if you walk far enough you will surely reach that tipping point where, if you take one step more, you’ll fall off the earth’s face into … goodness knows where. ‘Not that one is ridiculing them,’ says Barney, ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion, theory and their belief.

Only, some get it totally wrong.’ ‘But how stupid it is to go around telling everyone that the world is spinning even as we speak,’ says Sam MacFarlaine, who must surely be all of 150 years, although the year on his birth certificate clearly attests he’s 82.

Eighty-two is an age, says Barney, where people have already lived through a series of changes so they ought to be up on where Science and Technology has led us, up to this moment. But no, Sam obviously subscribes to the tribe that denies progress on every level, refuses to accept it.

The following day, his granddaughter, a millennial, bought him an Opal card, took him by the hand (nearly kicking and screaming) into the bus and showed him how to swipe himself on and then at the end of the trip to swipe himself out. At first Sam looked confused and even perplexed, one might say, to see everything work so smoothly — the swiping in, swiping out.

- Kevin Martin

No cell phone

hey will never, ever be caught carrying a mobile phone. Their homes will be sparse, minimalistic: no television, no telephone, no computer, a radio maybe. When plastic electronic bus cards came into use, Sam was one of those caught floundering, sending his archaic philosophy into battle with modernity, and losing terribly.

He staged a one-man protest at the bus depot one morning when no one was watching except for a few cigarette-puffing bus drivers on their break. He placed his fold-up easy chair right in the middle of the bus lanes, sat in it and opened the daily newspaper to his favourite page, Letters to the Editor, and defied the buses to run him down.

This was at a sedate hour, when all the workers were at work and all the pupils at school (hopefully), so inconvenience to the masses was minimal, to say the least. In the end, it took one phone call from an irate passenger and the arrival of the police car, lights flashing but siren not even blaring, to get Sam to vacate his ill-chosen seat, which he did with a minimum of fuss.

The following day, his granddaughter, a millennial, bought him an Opal card, took him by the hand (nearly kicking and screaming) into the bus and showed him how to swipe himself on and then at the end of the trip to swipe himself out. At first Sam looked confused and even perplexed, one might say, to see everything work so smoothly — the swiping in, swiping out.

Jingling the coins

‘What do I do with my change?’ he inquired, jingling the coins in his pocket. ‘Keep it, you’ve already paid,’ said the driver, smiling, the same one who’d watched his protest 24-hours earlier. ‘I have?’ asked Sam. ‘You have, grandpa,’ confirmed his granddaughter, a tad embarrassed. ‘I’ll never understand these newfangled systems,’ grumbled Sam, allowing himself to be led to his seat.

Another 24-hours of practice with the granddaughter and he was quite the pro himself. By the end of the week Sam was leading his good 85-year-old mate, Leslie, up the bus steps — one, two, three, up we go — and showing Leslie — still wearing a perplexed look — how to swipe his bus card (Not there, Les! There! Yes, that’s right. Hear that little pinging sound? That’s your cash taken for you.

Without actually paying anything. Imagine that!) And that, in a few steps is how one can go from being progress denier to a promoter of modern times, all with the swagger of a professional, like one has been doing this all one’s life, even if one still questions how we can all possibly be seated so still when someone says something nonsensical like, ‘The earth is spinning.’

— Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.