All About Perspective

I was sad to see that Nashville attorney Charlie Williams passed away this week.

Years and years ago, I worked a temp job in his law firm over on Woodland St. in East Nashville. I remember being impressed with him because I was quite intimidated being in a law office for the first time and he was very warm and welcoming to me. I did temp work for about a year and it was not the norm for the Big Guy of the company to make an effort to say "hello" and chat.

The big thing I associate with Charlie Williams is that it was in his office that I first used email, Windows and a mouse. I thought it was the most far out thing I had ever seen. The email was only inter-office to send messages, but, it was totally different than filling out the standard office message. I had worked with computers some before that, but, it was the black background with orange letters. This was in 1990.

My 71 year old mother is today, taking a computer class and she was so upset with the mere fact she has to, in order to clock in at her work. She totally does not get the computer age. She also is still coming to grips with the fact that Ike no longer lives in the White House.

Her biggest concern about having to use a computer? Coming up with an 8 letter password.

I sometimes forget that Mom did not come up in the computer age and have to remind myself that email and the world wide web have not always been part of everday life. I can almost compare my first experience with email at Mr. Williams' law firm with how it probably was back in Mom's day when she first encountered that thing they call "television."