Toward the end of my illustrious career educating America’s Future (or at least desperately trying to) I kept hearing my students refer to me as “Old School.”

At first I thought it was a compliment. You know, a pat on the back for being bloodied but still unbowed. Which only goes to show how Old School I am.

From what I deduced, its meaning runs the gamut from quaint to hopeless.

And in a broad sense, they’re right. I was born in the mid-20th century and while my bod has creaked into the 21st, the rest of me has stayed behind, cut off and isolated — in soul and psyche, the last survivor of The Lost Battalion.

Which is not unusual. Live long enough in what’s commonly mislabeled “an advanced society” and you find even if you have the map, you can’t recognize the territory — especially the territory of folks a couple of generations younger.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not passing judgment on those peeps; I just lay no claim to understanding them. Their music isn’t my music; their clothes are not my clothes. Their humor eludes me as much as mine eludes them. I can’t understand how they — or anyone — can spend five hours a day glued to a cell phone. And I’m sure they can’t understand how I can spend as much time reading books.

Of course, we were raised in separate worlds. Their entertainment options are endless … and all battery-powered. Ours were pretty much restricted to what we could lay our hands on. Sure, we had radio and TV. But we got only the local radio station, which went off the air at dusk; similarly, we had only two TV channels, in black and white no less.

Discretion was something we understood from the get-go, and if we shared anything, it was not of an intimate nature. Today, it seems no one keeps anything to oneself, from long screeds about their romantic disasters to marvelously graphic pics of their gaping wounds and abscessed bicuspids.

Ultimately, ours was a much simpler world, and one that didn’t extend much beyond the town limits. If there was a tsunami in Indonesia, riots in Gdansk or mudslides in Moldavia, we were none the wiser. If you had a pen pal in some exotic locale like Cleveland or Norfolk (ah, the days when we wrote letters), travel was so restricted, there was no way you’d ever see each other, except in fuzzy snapshots taken with your Brownie Kodak. At 9:30 each night, the fire alarm went off, signifying the start of curfew. If you were under 16, you went home, or the cops made sure you did. Negotiation was found only in labor unions (something else now long gone).

Note: While I said things were simpler, I didn’t say they were necessarily better. That’s always up for debate.

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Cyber-treachery

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Certainly, one of the biggest differences between then and now is technology. In my youth, it was fairly comprehensible; today it’s as unknowable to me as God’s middle intial. Computers are a case in point.

I have both a computer and an iPad, which I use as either my typewriter, my mailbox, or my research library. I write my columns by hand, but edit and send them in on computer. I email to a few friends, as almost everyone on God’s green earth no longer does, having been usurped by Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and for all I know, ESP. Last, I love to look up stuff on the internet, and often have to in order to verify or dismiss the stuff I see posted on Facebook or in what passes for news.

When those devices work, they work perfectly, and I’m a happy little Dope. But when they don’t, I’m completely lost and panic-stricken, since I’ve no idea what’s wrong or how it can be corrected. An event last month is a perfect example.

I suddenly lost my internet connection — and it stayed lost all day. Finally, I called Verizon and got connected with a technician. After checking out everything, he said the service was fine, but my modem was kaput.

“Is that your original modem?” he asked.

I told him it was.

“Well, it’s eight years old,” he said, as if he was a car salesman and I asked how much I’d get trading in my ’76 Trabant.

OK, no sweat — I ordered another modem and a few days later it arrived. By then, my computer was up and running just fine, as it had been an hour or so after my call with the technician. So the package sat, unopened.

If it ain’t broke … and you know the rest. Though in this case, after another week, my internet went out — and stayed out. All right, time to let the new thing do its thing. I figured all I had to do was replace the wires in the new modem exactly as they were in the old one, and since they were color-coded it seemed like a lead pipe cinch. Then again, so do ski jumping, juggling, and bartending — if you’ve never done them.

First, I turned the power switch off and took the wires out of the old modem. Then I put the new modem next to the old one, took the new one’s wires out and clipped them in. So far, so good.

Next, I disconnected the wires from the router and replaced them. After that, I put the new power unit in the power strip. Then I turned the power strip back on, but nothing happened. No power was coming through, so while everything seemed all right, it wasn’t. I felt that vein in my forehead start to throb.

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A call for help

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Now what?

Now I did what I always do with computer hassles — I called my friend Jim Minney. Jim’s also the CFO, CEO, Public Relations Director and sole employee of Onsite Computer Services. And let’s get real, when my computer goes awry, I don’t need a friend, I need an expert.

I tried to explain the situation, which due to my ignorance and rapid pulse, was at best jumbled.

“All right,” he said. “Is the power cord connected?”

“It is,” I said.

“OK,” he said. “Now check all your other connections and make sure they’re secure.”

“I will,” I said, and not wanting to take up any more of his time, I said goodbye.

I checked the cords and when I did, I made an interesting discovery: The new power cord was plugged into the modem … but not in the power strip. I plugged it in and swore I’d never tell Jim about my little omission. But even after I plugged it in, there was no power to the computer. My left eye started to twitch.

I called Jim again. And Jim, ever calm, told me the next logical steps to pursue. I thanked him, hung up, and did what he said. And again — Nada. Rien de rien. Bubkes.

So another phone call, and another, and another, as I found more things I hadn’t seen before. And the more things I found, the more my heart hammered and my left eye twitched.

On my last call, Jim asked me about the number of ports on the back of the modem. When I told him, he then told me the new modem was actually both a modem and a router. So now all I had to do was disconnect everything from the router, and have connections only between the modem/router and computer. I did it and — voila! — my computer came on. Victory at last!

It seemed too good and too simple to be true. And it was, because my iPad didn’t come on.

Again, a call to Jim, who was still the very picture of patience.

“Did you put in the iPad’s password?’ he asked.

“No,” I said. “Where is it?’

“Right on the new modem,” he said. “It’ll have ‘password’ written there.”

I turned it over and looked and sure enough, there it was.

I thanked him for what I prayed was the last time and then typed the password in my iPad. Nothing. I typed it in again and again and again. And still more nothings.

With sweat pouring down my face, my heart about to leap out of my chest, and my right eye twitching even more than my left, I debated smashing the iPad, modem, and computer into tiny pieces and to hell with all of it.

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Saved by the bell

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Suddenly, the phone rang. It was Jen X.

“Hey,” she said, “we still on for this afternoon’s coffee date?”

“Oh yeah, sure,” I said, having completely forgotten about it. “Only thing is, I’m struggling.”

“With what?”

I proceeded to tell her my whole computer horror story, ending with the password that wouldn’t pass.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “It’s a simple password. Just WA2B. I put it in a bunch of times, but the iPad wouldn’t turn on.”

“And it won’t, as long as you keep typing that in,” she said, far too cheerily for me.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause that’s not the password,” she said. “The password is underneath that. It’s some long drawn-out series of numbers and letters. That WA2B is just a heading of some sort.”

“I thought it looked awful simple for a password,” I said. “Hold on.”

I took a bunch of deep breaths and waited till my pulse had slowed to a mellow 185 or so, and then looked where she said to. And there, lo and behold, was the real password. I typed that mess in my iPad, it powered up, and all was right with the world — at least for now.

A good end to this saga will be if the new modem, like the old one, lasts another eight years.

And a great end will be if I last another eight years as well.