When I worked for Digital Credit Union in another lifttime, we instituted a telephone service where people could dial up and order checks automatically. One woman called me, and in a quivery voice that spoke of age, said she had dialled several times, she was sure she had done everything right, but no money came through the telephone.

I explained, the service cut a check that was mailed to her.

“Ah,” she said. “I wondered how it worked.”

Older people are supposed to be techno-phobic. My Swiss gentlemen friend says that computers were not of his generation, even though he has been saying it since his fifties and he is now in his seventies. He ignored me when I told him that a 95-year old woman from my writing group was complaining that surfing the web, emailing people known and unknown was cutting into her writing time. He still refused to even use an ATM card.

Thus, when I went to my bank’s ATM, I was surprised to see two very old women, grey-haired, well-dressed in heels and stockings, grey-haired, stooped, probably at least in their late seventies using the ATM machine. One was showing her friend how to use it. “Formidable,” said the neophyte user, “I should have done this years go.” It was formidable, wonderful.