May 12, 2010 | 2:17 pm

Tweet’s Me

Posted by Chava Tombosky

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This week I landed in T-mobile to get my phone fixed and a gentleman in his 60’s stood in line attempting to add text to his plan.  With fear and trepidation, he asked how much it would be to add the frightening new technology to his life.  He understood he needed to keep up with the all too quickly changing world if he was going to be hip. Or just plain involved.  A tinge of heartache throbbed in me as I felt his pain at the ignorance of this new way of communication.  I was also very amused. “Going text,” I said.  Poor guy rolled his eyes and responded, “I don’t really want to, I’m not sure how to, but I got no choice if I’m going to make it in my business.

Then it dawned on me, that the feeling of not understanding why things are the way they are or how things work could feel so distressing.  I am not afraid to admit that there are certain things I just don’t get at all.  I don’t get how e-coli can get into Romaine lettuce bags calling a massive recall. What are they doing- washing the lettuce on a raw chicken soaked chopping board and then vacuum packing the bacteria in air tight plastic?  (I’m also okay with the fact that I could be showing my cards of sheer ignorance at writing this claim- don’t judge me.)  What is a Playtex eighteen-hour bra? Does it shrivel up and expire at the eighteenth hour?  Maybe it is a proclamation that this bra is extraordinary because it has the ability to be worn for eighteen hours straight. 

A) Who would want to wear a bra for eighteen hours straight?
B) Is this article of clothing made out of Titanium?

Why doesn’t driver’s Ed include a full on lesson on how the INSIDES of my car work?  “Miss, you’ll need new rotors and your pads are out, we’ll have to change ‘em. Nine hundred and eighteen bucks.”  Rotors? Pads? Does Playtex also make these? For all I know the mechanic could tell me there’s an alternate universe living under the hood of my car and I’d believe it.  Maybe if Playtex made these expensive parts, they would last longer.

Lastly, I don’t get twitter.  I don’t get the need to tweet. I don’t get why people want to know what I’m up to all day. I get why they want to know what I’m up to once a week, but all day- everyday?  Even I don’t want to know what I’m doing all day every day, let alone know what everyone else is doing all day everyday.  I am an official tweeter, but I have NO idea how to use it.  I only became a tweeter because like the guy in the T-mobile store, I had no choice if I was going to make it. 

I hear people following twitter are in the millions. We’ve become a voyeuristic society that depends on hearing about what other people are doing, consumed by other people’s lives so we don’t have to focus on our own.  So we don’t have to concentrate on our own failures. So we don’t have to look at our own realities that are sometimes disappointing, frustrating, upsetting- Dang-I gotta learn to Tweet. ‘Course that would mean me fitting this social dialogue into my day on top of BBM, IM, texting, phone calls, and live dialogue.  Which means, no time to learn auto mechanics or the origin of Escherichia coli.

Maybe I will take a Tweet course.  Maybe I’ll find a way to appreciate Playtex, and finally learn what’s under the hood of my car.  Maybe I’ll live my life in perfect ignorant bliss. Or maybe, I’ll text that guy from the T-mobile store and ask him.