According to my birth year, I am a part of this great youthful generation that is pioneering our way to a new future with technology. However, it is with these technological advances that I am a failure to my savvy comrades. The skills I have in the technological field equal that of my eighty-year-old Grandma, who is more patient with her iPhone than I. I don't understand it but most of the technology I touch fails in some shape or form. Just yesterday my iPhone was afflicted by a vibration seizure. It vibrated for a solid 30 seconds before restarting. I didn't even do anything more than go to check my text messages.

There are at least three pieces of technology (that I know of) that have broken after I've touched a few buttons. It might be my curse to never fully gain the trust of these machines to have them work flawlessly for me.

1. The X-Box 360

Let me start off by saying that this gaming system was my brother's prized possession. Now, I knew how to work it in order to get it to play my DVD. It was meant to be easy, just insert the disk and the X-Box will magically maneuver me to the movie. However, that night the X-Box decided to become my enemy. I did everything right. I inserted the disk and let it run, but that was when the message appeared: Cannot read disk. How could it not read the disk? It was a DVD. I had watched this same disk from this game system before. It didn't make sense. Taking a deep breath, I calmly ejected the disk and sat, letting the system think. After several seconds, I inserted the disk again, only to be met by the same message.

It's really after that that my memory has blurred, blocked out by frustration and anger. I vaguely recall hitting the box, pressing multiple buttons, and throwing up my hands in defeat. The fear was starting to set in as I thought of my brother's wrath if he found his X-Box broken the next day. Then, my boyfriend stepped up. By touching a few buttons, he got the movie up and running. He never received the "Cannot read disk" message. How? Just how?

2. The Computer

Before I started college, I received a MacBook Pro computer that is actually still kicking today. Sure, sometimes the screen goes blank without notice, DVDs get stuck in the player on occasion and the battery runs out rather quickly. Also, it can get so tired and overheated that I have to talk soothingly to it so it won't shut down in the middle of writing an essay. But it works.

However, there was one night where I really thought I'd done it, I thought I had severely injured my precious computer with my clumsiness. I was watching Netflix, enjoying my Friday night movie and popcorn, when suddenly I let my elbow slip onto my mousepad. Now this doesn't seem like a big deal, right? Wrong. The pressure that my elbow applied to the pad pressed it unnaturally down into the computer. For a few minutes the mouse on the screen darted back and forth in confusion and I could hardly click on anything.

The thoughts that ran through my mind went something like this: "Noooooooooo... This cannot happen... I need this computer... I don't have money to fix it... nooooo..." As I took a deep breath (for this seems to be my coping mechanism for when technology backfire on me), I shut my computer and let it stand silent for a full minute as I contemplated my options. I could either chuck it at the wall and put it out of it's misery or I could click some buttons. Calmly, I opened it back up and applied more pressure to the mousepad, hoping it would pop back out. It didn't. For a day and a half, the mousepad was pressed into the computer until finally after enough clicking on it, it gradually snapped out. Now, it still sometimes feels the residual effects of this incident where the mousepad can get stuck for a brief second before clicking back to normal but otherwise it's still working.

3. The Thermostat

I'll admit, this one was bad. I should not have touch as many buttons as I did. In my defense, all I wanted was the air conditioning to cool off the house on a sweltering hot day. Alas, my curse would not allow me this one pleasure.

I was in charge that weekend, of the house, my siblings and the dog. Everyone was complaining of the heat and my parents hadn't turned the air on themselves because they like the fresh air or whatever. So, I took it upon myself to figure out how to cool things down.

Stepping up to the little box on the wall, I felt confident. It couldn't be too hard, right? I pressed the down button to lower the temperature, and nodded for I felt reassured that it had worked by the lit up screen. But a couple minutes later, when I didn't feel any air coming through the vents, I knew something was wrong.

I tried again, this time pushing more buttons to see if anything would pump some cool air into the house. To make a long story short, it didn't. I had effectively broken the thermostat. We had to get it replaced after that.

And there you have it. The tales of my many woes of working with technology. Seriously, does anyone else have these problems?