Such things don't always come naturally

I’ve just heard about someone – a twenty-year-old university student, actually – who didn’t know how to use a paperclip. And so it dawned on me not only that a paperclip might be a generational thing, but also that a paperclip actually ‘works’ in some way (or, if in the hands of the wrong generation, doesn’t).

And this alarming anecdote of twenty-first-century life – and accompanying minor epiphany – came to me soon after I’d been pondering the fact that these days, just when you need a paperclip, there’s none to be found. The recesses of any respectable desk drawer used to be teeming with the things, but now that I found myself reaching for one (I confess that my intentions were not entirely modern – I was posting a cheque), those recesses were empty. Had the paperclip’s obsolescence come too soon, before our need was gone but after we’d finished restocking, and all this time supplies had been running dangerously low? Whether or not this was a correct interpretation of the situation, it was obviously time to improvise (and to think about how if the paperclip hadn’t been invented it would be time to do so).

So paperclips should definitely exist, I feel, and it should be incumbent upon twenty-year-old university students to be versed in their workings. By the same token, I’ve been grappling with the complexities of an altogether newer contraption, and there’s been a great deal incumbent upon me since I took ownership of it. For the truly interesting thing about this new iPhone of mine is this: its workings are apparently intuitive, but I’m having to learn them. As I now know, such things don’t always come naturally.