(Insert applause, sneers and snickers here.)

Specifically, the world of technology is escaping me, racing past, leaving me behind like eight-tracks and Edsels.

The math to catch up plays pretty poorly, too.

I refer to a couple pieces in the Sunday business section about computer mischief. One detailed a powerful virus call the Trojan Horse; the other was a report on hackers who were compromising domain name system (DNS) servers to reroute Internet traffic.

Nasty stuff.

I think.

And therein hangs a tale: I really don't know from viruses, hackers, hinky DNS servers or Trojan Horses. I know enough to realize they are bad, but to explain them in detail, I'd need a tutorial, a 10-year-old and Bill Gates.

I am not completely flying blind. I can usually get a column written, do the research necessary to attest to its veracity and inflict no exponential damage on similarly situated computers on our server.

At home, I've successfully avoided fraud and electrical fires.

I know better than to open or forward spam. Nor do I believe that I have won a gazillion-dollar lottery in the Netherlands. And, tough as it may be, I always forgo the thousands I would get for helping a Nigerian princess unlock her fortune.

I have hardware issues, too. When my home computer went south last month, I had no idea what the problem was, let alone how to fix it. (I called wise friends.)

Whenever I read articles on computers or face technological dilemmas, I am never shocked how shallow my skill set is and how little I know.

That's not the worst of it: I'm not sure I want to know.

Granted, I want to be technoindependent, to bring Emerson's principles of self-reliance to the desktop.

I try. I marvel at new software or ways to use the universe's current connectivity. I have Wired magazine as a tab on my Google page. I text message regularly.

But more often than not, I find myself asking for a simpler explanation of a fairly simple concept. My son's generation, the thumb generation, is wireless and wily in the ways of gadgets. Keeping up is a full-time job and rather expensive.

That really bites. Or should I say bytes?

Now they tell me Blu-Ray has defeated HD DVD. I suppose my new HD DVD-only player put them over the top. For all my shortcomings, I still want to know if I'm investing in obsolescence.

There is, apparently, hope for the aged. Social sites for us codgers like Rezoom and Boomertown are now out there, places I could go to hang with my chronological peers.

Too bad my reaction is along the lines of Social sites? At my age?

Maybe I'll just read a book or take a walk. (Soon as I find my GPS.)

The moral of this story is clear: Make friends with the system person, and, despite Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, have your children teach you well.

* * *

One, three, midnight

Let's be clear. Better yet, let me be clear.

In Sunday's column on the demise of the Conoco Cafe, I said that, as a child, I assumed only Protestants ate Sunday breakfast there because we Catholics couldn't eat before Mass. I wrote about the "whole one-hour fasting before Communion business" in relationship to my father's huge breakfasts.

We do fast for one hour, but it wasn't always that way even in my lifetime. Granted, portions of my childhood grow hazier with time, but according to EWTN, Pope Pius XII reduced the original fasting period from midnight to three hours in the late 1950s. Pope Paul VI set it at one hour in 1964. I corroborated the fasting succession history with two very good Catholics: my mother and a priest.

Time is relative, too. When you're a kid and hungry but trying to pave the first few steps to heaven, even a few minutes may seem like an eternity.