To rest my eyes, I need something simple to listen to music on.

Sounds easy in the Days of the Internet.

But a Google search assumes I am interested in iPods. There are ads for iPods. There are no doubt interesting discussions of the latest in iPods, what is going on in the World of iPod.

I have told you a number of times that my siblings are even older than I am. They are all able to use the Internet ONLY because I stayed a night with each of them and showed it to them.

I EXPLAINED it.

I explained it, not as entertainment or The Latest Thing, but as a wholly new and different thing.

The first thing I taught them was control-alt-delete. Back then it just plain got you out of anything you were doing, and that is what they wanted to know first.

When you get on a plane, the first thing they tell you about is the escape hatches.

Once they knew how to get out, my siblings were ready to go in.

VERY carefully.

In an age when Kindergarteners use computers, introducing people to them who used to wear earphones to hear crystal radio requires a thousand tons of empathy.

Our job is different, but the problem is the same. We have to talk, not about the best way to put things that a real person in a real world would naturally want to hear. We have to go where THEY are.

Stormfront can talk about the latest in racial solutions and news. That’s where their audience is.

We have to go out into the instantly hostile world where the general population is.

They have no interest in our iPod, they have no idea what it is, and they have a suit of armor on against having it explained to them.

It’s sort of like teaching a math class to a roomful of juvenile delinquents who still have their handcuffs on.