Button pushing

I am getting old. I find I am missing the old way of doing things once they've gone.

Take the car we hired in Scotland. It didn't have a key that you put into the ignition and turned, it had a card that you put into a slot and a big button you pushed to start and stop the engine. Very unsatisfying. It also had an automatic handbrake. Even more unsatisfying. It was more like an arcade car experience than a real car experience. What's next, no steering wheel and a joystick with buttons for left and right instead?

But at least the car had buttons. Our new stove has one of those touch thingamybobs that you press to turn the heat up and down. I only realised tonight, after several episodes of finger-jabbing frustration where I couldn't get the stove to work properly no matter how hard I poked it*, that you don't need to press or push anything, you just gently lay your finger on the touch thingy and voilà, the temperature changes. I can't say I actively miss turning a dial the way I missed turning a car key and pulling the handbrake on and off, but still, gently caressing the stove somehow doesn't feel right. Not physical enough. I'd like to press something and feel at least some movement, some sensation that I actually did something.

I'm sure there's people who still miss a choke, typewriters, eggbeaters ... probably even wringers. And I like modern conveniences, I really do. But the joy of button pushing and key turning and pressing things is innate - just look at how much kids like to do these things. So preventing us from carrying out these basic needs is actually cruelty. Cruelty, I tell you. It shouldn't be allowed. Youngsters these days, they just don't know what they've lost with these new-fangled contraptions. Everything was so much better in my young day!

Right, now I've got the diatribe, I'm ready for the nursing home.

* Just so you don't think I've been unable to work the stove ever since we moved in: it was only installed the week before we went away, and I've only used it a couple of times since then. So yes, that still makes me a slow learner, but not too embarrassingly slow.