"You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks"

Neil Fastabend
Dr. Farman
DTC 375: Language, Texts & Technology
11 March, 2009
Word Count: 987

I interviewed my mother, Deanna Fastabend. She is 50 years old and a very cheerful and laid back mother of three. She grew up Santa Ana, California and then moved to Spokane, WA when she was thirteen. She went to Shadle Park High School and was the typical teenage girl, using the phone a lot and spending time with friends as much as she could. She commented on her phone usage saying "we had five teenagers in the house so we had time limits on the phone every day. We were limited to an hour a day roughly."

Deanna is currently a stay at home wife and mother, but she used to work at Baum’s candy store in Richland as well as at a paper factory in Spokane, WA with her mother before she got married. She also worked part time as a car hop for Zips drive-in near her home in Spokane as a teenager. She grew up transitioning from having one black and white television in her entire house to having a color television and a computer in just about every room now. Long gone are her days of having to fight over phone time because of cell phones. "I love the new technology and I'm glad we have it" she says happily. Deanna uses e-mail every day to keep in touch of her friends and family and according to her, she couldn't live without it. She has had to learn to use cell phones, text messaging, computers, and the internet in just the last twelve years, and she said it best in her own words, claiming: "you can teach an old dog new tricks."

Neil: What type of communication method did you use before computers?

Deanna: I used the telephone and hand wrote letters.

Neil: What were the downsides of using that method?

Deanna: Long distance phone calls were very expensive. I was lucky that my mom’s sister worked for the phone company and she could connect us to friends and family living in Spokane when we lived in southern California so it wouldn’t cost us anything. But using the phone would make your ear hurt a lot after a while. I always like writing letters to my aunts and uncles when I was young, it was just very time consuming. If I misspelled anything I would just have to scratch it out.

Neil: How did you communicate with friends usually?

Deanna: I would call them on the phone. But we had five teenagers in the house so we had time limits on the phone every day. We were limited to an hour a day roughly.

Neil: In comparison, how do you communicate with friends and family now?

Deanna: E-mail is great for people out of town, and I use the phone as well. I am able to keep in touch with a lot more people now using e-mail than I could before, and it doesn’t cost anything to use it.

Neil: Was it difficult to learn to use a computer?

Deanna: I still don’t know how to use it, I’m still learning, and it’s been twelve years. I had to learn how to type using a typing program. Everything else I learned from my kids.

Neil: Were you excited or intimidated by computers when you started to use them?

Deanna: Intimidated at first but now I love it. I was intimidated by the unknown, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing so I was afraid I was going to do something wrong and crash the computer. And they were very expensive when we got our first one so I didn’t want to break it.

Neil: After using e-mail to communicate, do you think you could ever go back?

Deanna: No, I love e-mail. It’s just more fun and convenient.

Neil: Are there downsides to using e-mail and text messaging compared to older forms of communication?

Deanna: Not really. I really like e-mail, it’s the one thing I do all day is check my e-mail. I still talk to people on the phone as well so it’s not like I feel disconnected from them at all. It just makes everything easier.

Neil: What do you think about kids growing up today where everyone has a cell phone and communicates with text messages and computers rather than how you did?

Deanna: I think that there is more isolation now. I don’t feel like kids now have the communication skills today that I had when I was a kid, because they don’t have to because of the technology.

Neil: If you had grown up in present day how do you think your life would be different?

Deanna: I would have been one of the kids with a computer, using Twitter and text messaging and using cell phones. I would be in-the-know. I would have been one of the kids that used everything to keep in touch with friends.

Neil: What form of communication do you prefer to use now?

Deanna: I still prefer the phone, even just the land line so that I don’t worry about using minutes. But I text message for fun and definitely love to use e-mail over hand writing anything.

Neil: Is there anything else you would like to add about your experiences with these different forms of communication?

Deanna: You can teach an old dog new tricks. I love the new technology and I’m glad we have it. I will never forget the first week we had our first computer I remember going online and touring the Louvre museum online until almost 3 am, I just couldn’t stop. And about a month ago I got on Google Earth and looked at photos of my old neighborhood, it was so much fun, and I’ll never forget it.