For many years, I kept my calendar on my cell phone and/or my iPad via my BFF Google. I wasn’t really very good at it. I have never learned the skill of typing words using my two thumbs. I’m a pointer finger all the way. It’s slow, but it’s what I can handle. I type text messages the same way.

But it wasn’t the speed at which I put appointments into my calendar that made me rethink my position on calendars. It was the fact that I live in two cities that are in different time zones for six months of the year. The problem was that I would put an appointment into my calendar for, say, 3:30 in one city. Google would then change it to 4:30 if I happened to change time zones. It had no way of knowing that I really meant 3:30 in that second time zone.

I know. I know. There is probably a way to fix this. I addressed the problem for several years by writing out the time in the notes section of my cell phone calendar. So, if the appointment was at 3:30, I would write out three thirty.

At some point in mid-2021, I said, “The hell with it!” Or something like that. I went out and purchased an old-school paper calendar. It had the dates. It had room for notes on the side. It was decorated with pretty pink flowers. I loved it. I love it.

Yesterday morning, Bill and I were driving to an appointment with his neurologist that was scheduled for 10:30. I remember making the appointment this past December, shortly after I had purchased my new paper calendar. I took the calendar with me to the December appointment. And when it came time to schedule our next appointment in six months, I pulled the calendar diary out of my purse, sort of like Captain Kangaroo pulling things out of his big pockets. The scheduler gave me a date and time, and I wrote it into my calendar.

So, I lacked no confidence in thinking, no, KNOWING, that our appointment was at 10:30. Except when we arrived at 10: 25, we were told that we were late for our 10 o’clock appointment.

“No, we most certainly are not late, because the appointment was for 10:30,” I said firmly. I took my calendar out of my purse and showed her. She was clearly horrified that I had a paper calendar diary with pink flowers. And since she is a millennial, she was unable to read my cursive anyway. She sent me to speak with the scheduler.

“I know our appointment was at 10:30, because I wrote it down in my calendar,” I said, pointing to the scribblings in my diary. She looked equally horrified, and I knew I would never convince them that they had gotten the date wrong on their nifty scheduling program on their nifty computer.

The scheduler was smarter than the receptionist, however. She blamed it on the previous scheduler who was no longer with the medical practice.

“Well,” I thought to myself. “She shouldn’t be with the practice if she can’t handle technology.”

We’ll never know who’s fault it was, but it’s always nice to have a scapegoat.