Remember the scene in the movie, "City Slickers," where Billy Crystal is trying to explain to Daniel Stern about how to program a VCR to record from the television? As they ride their horses through the wilderness driving cattle along on their vacation cattle drive, he goes into a very detailed and thorough explanation. But no matter how many times or ways he explains it, Daniel Stern will never quite get it; in fact, the explanation goes on so long that the other character exclaims that "he'll never get it; even the cows understand it now." It is a hilarious scene in the movie, but part of the hilarity comes from the fact that many of us don't understand it either, so we can relate. And it seems that just as some of us were beginning to figure out how to program our VCRs, along came DVD players that most of us feel we need a license to operate.

This being the computer age, DVD players, and even VCRs to some extent, are totally computerized. If one doesn't have or know how to operate a computer, the DVD player might be lost on them. It's as if our technology has passed up some of us. We want to be in on it, but somewhere along the way, someone changed the rules. It would be similar to someone adding another element to the English language - like a whole extra alphabet that we have to learn. As we read books and magazines, we would suddenly find this new alphabet interspersed with our old, familiar one, but since we haven't learned the new one, we can't read the material; we see some things we recognize, and we know we could probably "get it" if we took the time to learn, but that's the problem - we don't have the time.

When we bought our first DVD player, the only thing I knew about our current VCR was how to record something at a given moment. I had no idea how to set the clock or how to program the machine to record something at a later date. If I, or one of my family members, couldn't be home to hit record at the proper time, then the show didn't get taped. Along came the DVD player and I felt like I could suddenly learn how to use the VCR. The DVD player required a remote control in order to be used. It required switching channels or some such thing and then doing all sorts of input/output actions just to get to the part where I could start the movie. Thankfully, my teenaged son is a computer geek and seemed to inherently know how to work the DVD player. Soon my young daughters caught on as well. Whenever we want to watch a movie, they simply set it all up and all is well.

I like this system, but one day, I might want to watch a movie when they aren't home. Or worse, one day they will grow up and move away. I guess then, I might have to learn that new alphabet.