I'm Not Going To Remember All Those Little Buttons!

Janet writes: For quite a while now, Tim and I have had an issue with exercise. We want to be able to exercise together, but we exercise at different levels of intensity and in different styles. Tim has more time to exercise, but has to watch his body temperature and endurance levels. I can usually tolerate a higher intensity level when I exercise, but I don’t have as much time. To complicate matters, I am now having health problems myself which are limiting my ability to exercise.



Anyway, our solution to this exercise dilemma was to get ourselves a Wii. You’ve seen all the articles about how people who haven’t been able to exercise for a gazillion years are suddenly leaping out of their wheelchairs to play in Wii bowling tournaments sponsored by benevolent rehab centers? Well, this is not us, but we did try out my daughter’s Wii Fit once and liked it, so she helped us buy ourselves one for Christmas. Now, then, comes the process of setting it up.


When you have cognitive issues, it is not really the day to day operations of familiar electronics that cause you problems. No, it’s setting up and learning how to operate new gadgets that creates panic. Tim opened the box and immediately said “I’m not going to remember all those little buttons!” That is what instruction manuals are for.


What? Read instruction manuals? Yes, Tim reads instruction manuals, and then he gives them to me to read to him while he sets up the electronic gadget. Once he is done with this process, he usually remembers how the device operates and can reset it again if he needs to. If he can’t remember how, he can at least remember where the instruction manual is so he can look it up.


Uh, that would be in the filing cabinet in the instruction manual drawer…right?


Actually, we have learned to keep instruction manuals, warranty cards, and spare parts together in the plastic bag they came in. These bags do go in a special drawer in our filing cabinet, so we know right where to look when we need them. We saw this on TV the other day and they took it a step further by placing everything in zip lock bags and labeling it with black permanent marker.


That would make things easier to find. I’ll have to make a note to upgrade our instruction manual drawer. I’ll get right on that, just as soon as I’m done reading about all these little buttons…..