Navigating Google, and Restoring What Was Lost

January 4, 2018

Early this morning, after sending Son #2 off to face a windy day on snowy roads, I sat at my kitchen table and once again gave all my children to God, petitioning Him for grace and safety as they are on the wintry roads today.

The next order of business was to email a dear friend. Opening Gmail, I began typing a name, and the contact popped up. However, the smiling face in the little round circle was that of a young adult child in the family, not the friend with whom I was communicating.

Let me step out of the gmail circle a moment, and explain. This old fashioned girl has always kept her address book organized by family unit. Parents and children in one listing. Makes sense, right? Same address, same phone, etc. Really. 

 Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were on a party line? My Dad and Grandpa were actually featured in the local newspaper in 1958, for the novelty of being the first in the area to have an extension phone in the barn! Homework was done with neighborhood friends, not by Skype or Facetime, for example, but on the party line, to the annoyance of adults who had “real” business to conduct.

 And don’t forget Little Brother who would sneak up to the extension phone in your parents’ bedroom to stealthily listen in on your “secret” conversation with friends. Worse, after waiting, just forever, for that special boy to call, he does.

 But while you are breathlessly chatting, attempting to be cool and casual, you hear the grandfather clock chiming. The grandfather clock that lives in Grandma’s house across the lawn. Grandma’s not quite as stealthy. Or subtle. You just know what she’s going to do with what she overheard! Oh, the embarrassment and frustration.

 But we were family, and while we may not have had many secrets, the transparency was a safeguard that protected us from pitfalls faced by today’s younger generation.

Enter modern technology and social media. Now, everyone not only has their own phone and corresponding number, but social media accounts as well. The page has gotten filled up. So, my friend, who is not on social media beyond a family email address, by virtue of having a child who is, becomes represented by that child’s smiling face in the little circle on my gmail contact list.

As a result, I have been gradually changing my contacts to listings on an individual basis, instead of a family unit. (Kinda like how society in general is moving, both in thought and action, huh?)

 Now, it is early morning. The house is quiet. The Trucker is still asleep. I am too lazy to get up and procure pen and paper to copy down information so that it can be deleted from one account and applied to another. (And yes, I know there is a more efficient way to do this, but I have not yet learned that, either….) But, a brilliant thought – yes, I do have the odd flash now and then – occurred. My phone is in my pocket. I can bring up the account on my phone, delete the info from my laptop, then use the phone’s info to re-enter it on a new account on the laptop! Done.

You are ahead of me by now. Waaaaay, way ahead. Instantly, my phone emitted a fweeep!, and wiped its face of the contact information as well. Duh. Why did I think for a minute they were separate individuals, when in reality they were just two different faces attached to the same body of information? Now I had a problem. Multiple people could supply me with the lost information. But to which of those would I want to admit my stupidity? None.

The only thing left to do is ask Google. It of the little round circles. It who knows everything, just like Grandma on the party line back in the day, though we humans like to delude ourselves into thinking we have some privacy left. So I asked. And learned there was a marvelous little sequence of clicks I could perform, after which it would give me the option of restoring my contact list to what it was ten minutes ago, an hour, a day, or any combination I cared to dream up. 

Ten minutes ought to do it. Click, click, click. Upon which the display on my laptop screen fluttered, and my phone sounded another surprised little fweep! And what do you know? (Not much, if you are me.) The deleted contact was back. Just as if it had never left. 

 This time, I approached the task with a bit more intelligence, and my contacts, for this family at least, are finally separated into individual accounts. Now my dear friend’s little circle is blank, and the young adult child’s face smiles at me from a little gmail circle all its own.

 We have gone from many faces on one media, to one face on many media. There are things to be learned every day, even on early morning bunny trails.

Now, back to my email.

If only I could restore the losses of the last two years as easily....