Anxiety Aunt: Should I change my ways and embrace things like the cashless system even if I don’t want to?
Dear Aunty,
I am increasingly accused, by younger people, of living in the past. Some of the reasons for this include the fact that while I have bank plastic, I still use cash and like having notes in my wallet and coins in my pocket; I insist on dealing with bank staff I can talk to. I will not use internet banking; I still read newspapers and books on real paper; I still use the checkouts that are staffed at supermarkets. I’ll think about using self-checkouts when they give me a discount for doing their jobs and I refuse to drive an electric car. Should I make more effort to come to terms with changed ways of living that I am just not happy with?
Yours, Happy-as-I-am
Dear Happy-as-I-am,
Ah, a man after One’s own heart. Where exactly do you live my dear and how much money do you have in your bank account approximately? One jests of course. One is above throwing Oneself at strangers — well, these days at least.
First of all, let your Aunt assure you there is nothing wrong with doing things the way you want to do them. Just because the hordes are jumping on the merry-go-round doesn’t mean you also have to pay your five dollars and join them. In other words, dance to the beat of your own drum and feel free to embrace any change, progress or technology that suits you and reject anything that doesn’t.
Certainly no one can force you to do anything you don’t want to do, well, unless you live regionally, in which case it certainly seems you are being bent over a barrel when it comes to accepting a cashless society due to ongoing bank closures and disappearing ATMs, which anyone who lives regionally knows is about as fraught as trying to get into an argument about daylight savings with your dairy farmer neighbour.
If you live in the city, you will know we also grapple with these things but the consequences of one supermarket’s EFTPOS system going down just means you put your basket back and go and get the same thing across the mall from the opposition. Those in regional areas, however, may have to wait hours or even days until they can get their much-needed groceries if there’s a repeat of the blue-screen-of-death scenario.
Camera IconAnxiety Aunt. Credit: Don Lindsay/TheWest
One also enthusiastically backs your choice to read a physical newspaper and your Aunt never shuts One’s eyes without first devouring a chapter or two from the pages of a real book. One tried a Kindle once but One is sure that some component, be it the blue light or the vibes or whatever, contributed to your Aunt seeing every damn hour that night. It certainly couldn’t have been the copious amounts of chardonnay One consumed at dinner beforehand. So the Kindle was promptly rehomed and it was back to the library to borrow a hard copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
As for electric cars and self-serve checkouts, again One would say if they suit you, buy/use them; if they don’t, stick to your petrol guzzler and saying g’day to Doris the old dear who has worked at Woolies for 25 years and is always up for a chat about “the family” while she scans your items and slowly, very, very slowly, packs your bags.
What One would suggest you focus on, instead of worrying that you are not keeping up with changes, is why it bothers you what people think at all. Did you not get the memo that says as we get older we earn the right to give less and less credence to judgment of any sort? If you haven’t received said email, which should have arrived on your 60th birthday as promptly as a congratulatory letter from the King on reaching 100, then please send your Aunt your email address and One will forward it on. And One promises it isn’t a way to spark up an ongoing conversation . . . well, unless you want it to be, that is, Happy-as-I-am. Unless of course you haven’t actually turned 60 yet, in which case, ignore everything One has just said and stop acting like a baby boomer when you’re actually just a Luddite gen Xer.
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