I admit that when it comes to computers and smartphones, I was slow to jump on the bandwagon.
Back in the late 1990s, Mom went to one of those brick-and-mortar Gateway computer stores and got us a really fancy desktop, along with a printer, scanner, the whole nine yards. She got it mainly for document creation, with the internet being a side bonus.
It was months before I finally used it, and even when I did, I was usually only on for an hour or so at a time, mainly to catch up on soap opera message boards and to get spoilers on what happened during the day's episode (which I had to record but often couldn't watch until the weekends).
Eventually, I became a regular user, venturing to political message boards, where I learned to fine-tune my arguments against some pretty tough leftist cookies. And in 2003, I created my blog.
SEE ALSO: Amazon Announces Update Following Massive Outage Across Numerous Platforms
Years later, when BlackBerrys and then smartphones became a thing, I was resistant to that, too, wanting to hold on to my flip phone with the changeable covers as long as I could. I finally gave up when I figured out that texting on a smartphone would be much easier than the flip phones, which did not have the QWERTY keyboards.
One of the things I have been hesitant to use for various reasons - mostly related to privacy - outside of when I need to turn on the GPS to figure out where I'm going, has been the phone's location service. And up until recently, I have never done anything related to location sharing.
But my sister, who was taking a cross-country trip, wanted to share her location with me as a backup plan, as some of the places she and my brother-in-law would be visiting were off the beaten path or took long drives on winding roads. It took some configuring, but we got it set up.
It ended up being the neatest thing. Of course, I didn't look at it every five minutes, but every once in a blue moon, I'd look at it, and I'd joke with her about things like "Are you at this cafe?" The first time I did that, she texted me a photo of the exact (airport) cafe and said she had just passed it. My brother-in-law got a kick out of it, too.
A few days later, her map showed her next to "restrooms." We kidded each other about it, as bathrooms are one big thing women are always trying to map out on their journeys when traveling.
Mom and I would actually get a little sad when I'd check it and it would show her as "offline" (due to poor/no signal). We felt a little like we were on her vacation with her and that a part of her was still with us, like she hadn't left. When I told my sis about it, she loved it and said she felt the same way.
RELATED (VIP): Please Put the Smartphone Down
Also extremely cool was that we were able to see her flight path to and from on one of those flight tracker sites. It was amazing to see all the states they flew over to get to where they were going, and then back home. Mom and I would both look at the tiny digital plane icon on the map and say a little prayer to God to please keep her and my brother-in-law safe and allow their plane to land safely.
A couple of times, their flights would go just past the airport and circle back for landing, which was interesting but (presumably) normal.
All of that said, while it was super neat to be able to do this, I'm fully aware that people have used these tracking services for nefarious purposes. On the one hand, it's good to be able to use them at the person's invitation as a security measure, but on the other hand, it's scary to think of how easy it is to track someone, sometimes without their knowledge.
In any event, I learned something new through all this, that I can share my location with loved ones in the event that mom and I need to take an extended trip somewhere. It's something that will give us some peace of mind, and my other family members, too, not to mention it will give us a sense of closeness to family and home, even when we're far away.
