By Dick Wolfsie
Each year I devote two columns to review what I wrote about during the previous 11 months. For example, last winter I wrote about a cruise we took to Puerto Rico. Getting on the ship’s elevator required us to scan our room card. I kept swiping but the elevator door didn’t open. A fellow passenger walked by. “You’re scanning the hand sanitizer,” he told me.
One night I carried the TV remote onto the veranda outside our room that overlooked the ocean. The device slipped out of my hand when the ship rocked, and it landed in the Atlantic.
“That’s never happened before,” said the steward. “What were you doing when you dropped it?”
“I was channel surfing,” I told him.
I made reservations for our trip to the nation’s capital to attend a college reunion. Mary Ellen asked me to call and confirm that our hotel was close enough to walk to some of the area highlights.
“How far are you from the White House?” I asked the clerk.
“About 3,000 miles,” he told me.
I booked a hotel in Washington, all right. In Seattle, Wash.
I was frustrated that a website rejected some new passwords, so I just ran my fingers haphazardly across the keyboard. VERY STRONG, said the prompt. Please remember to write it down. But I had no idea what I had typed. Was it K$DFJHG%$ or was it YQW%KW?0&? Then I tried something simpler. I tried HERCULES, but it was rejected as WEAK. Then I tried SAMPSON. This time it said VERY WEAK. The people at this website have not read their mythology. But it did answer the age-old question of who was stronger.
I asked an AI program to draft an essay on why Dick Wolfsie was not funny, just to see what it would produce. My wife was not impressed when she read it.
“Dick this is outrageous; it’s full of inaccuracies. You didn’t bore people for 30 years on TV.”
“Thank you, Mary Ellen.”
“Wasn’t it closer to 40?”
With all the Artificial Intelligence warnings, my wife is paranoid that someone might steal one of our identities. Recently I called Mary Ellen to get her Social Security number for a form I was filling out. That’s when she gave me a little quiz to be sure it was me …. like, what’s your brother’s name? What was the name of your first dog? She still wasn’t convinced.
“Mary Ellen, you may ask one more question. Make it a good one.”
“OK, Dick — or whoever you are — when we got married, we stayed in a magnificent vacation spot in Big Sur, California. You said it was the most romantic, glorious hotel you had ever been in, and it was a weekend you would never forget. What was the name of the hotel?
“I don’t have a clue.”
“OK, it’s definitely you.”
This past spring, we went downtown to a cute little Bed and Breakfast to celebrate our wedding anniversary. The owner took us upstairs to show us the room, which was very quaint. There was one tiny bed. I’d say it was a double bed. But barely.
“Do you like your accommodations?” asked the proprietor.
“I love it,” said my wife, “but where is my husband going to sleep?”
The woman winked at me. “This is your romantic anniversary. I’m sure you will make it work.”
“Even on our honeymoon, this wouldn’t have worked,” said Mary Ellen.
A few more next week.
