MODERN DAD | By Jon Show

July 15. I consider myself an above average almost-50-something dad when it comes to tech. I installed our WiFi mesh system and programmed the smart outlets. I use my phone to manage my business and personal finances and cloud storage accounts.

I also do a pretty good job of trying to learn new things so I don’t wander through life as an aging humbug who refuses to adapt to the times.

But we all have our limits and they lost me at mobile payment apps.

I think my problem is that the very nature of them runs contrary to how most Gen Xers were raised.

Our fathers carried cash, regardless of their annual income and liquidity. They carried cash even if they didn’t have any money; and the guys with no money usually carried the most cash.

As a kid I never once sat in a restaurant with a group of dads who pulled out a receipt and did what accounts to Good-Will-Hunting-level math to figure out how much everyone owed each other, rounded up to a buffalo nickel.

If we were out to lunch with my friend and another dad, then one of the dads picked up the tab. Three years later when we went out to lunch with the same dad they both remembered who paid last time and the other one picked up the check.

Or maybe they never had a second lunch and one guy got stuck covering the cost of four cheeseburgers, two Cokes and two Coors Lights. They certainly never complained about it or asked to have $13 snail mailed to them post haste.

Cash is king

To be clear, I’m not against the exchange of money. I immediately pay someone back if I owe them money.

I’m against the concept of having to download a specific app on my phone, leafing through user names to find the person I owe, hoping there’s enough money in my account and then praying I paid the correct person because their profile pic is a golden retriever in the ocean.

What about ApplePay? Don’t have it. Why? Because I don’t like having a passcode on my phone. But what if someone finds my phone and steals my identity? They’re welcome to have it.

People looked at me sideways for years for not having Venmo. If I owed someone money they’d tell me to Venmo them and then I’d say I don’t have Venmo. Then they’d ask why I don’t have Venmo with the same tone a pro-vaxxer would question someone who never got the fourth Baller-Gerold Syndrome shot.

At one point I got so tired of the YOU DON’T HAVE VENMO people that on the rare occasion I did owe someone money I would go to the bank, get cash, put it in an envelope and write Venmo on the envelope and drop it on their front porch.

Crypto-criptic

Well, two years ago I had to run the finances for a middle school lacrosse team and was told there was no way that parents were dropping off their fees in the form of cash or check, so I opened a Venmo account that I planned to use for the duration of the season and never again.

However, my friends and I rent Airbnbs a few weekends a year to go on fishing trips and I usually make the reservation. Previously they just dropped off cash as repayment but after one trip they found my Venmo account and they all started paying me back on Venmo.

The problem with that scenario is that I always pay the modest rental fee for the houses months in advance. My friends don’t pay me until we go on the trip, and I don’t get notifications on Venmo transactions, so their payments piled up. After a couple years my account contained the cash equivalent of the Gross Domestic Product of Bahrain.

Rather than be an adult and learn how to transfer the money to my checking account, my solution was to apply for a Venmo debit card and use it to buy things that I otherwise would consider a luxury item, like a new pair of pants.

I also use Venmo to pay back my fishing buddies on the rare occasion one of them rents the house. To be honest, it’s quite exhilarating. Not having to hand over cash feels like I’m getting a free vacation.

Once I became comfortable with Venmo I also began using it to amuse myself, which I can be quite adept at doing. I started Venmo’ing my friends absurd amounts of money like 19 cents for  “warm hugs,” or sent them a request for payment of $10,000 “my cut of the bank robbery.”

But right as I was settling in on becoming a Venmo savant, along came CashApp and NerdWallet and whatever other digital forms of payment with a stupid name.

Oh yeah, Zelle.

You know that scene in Wizard of Oz when Dorothy is leaving Oz and she tells everyone how much she loves them but she tells Scarecrow she loves him most of all?

I feel the same way but the exact opposite about all those apps. And Zelle is the scarecrow I hate the most.

Zelle allegedly works … honestly I don’t know but I know it’s been explained to me a dozen times. Like, the other person doesn’t need Zelle or maybe it just goes from your bank account to theirs?

I don’t know and I’m not willing to find out. I got Venmo and that should be enough.

I called my dad – who still has a flip phone and once wired me money via Western Union – to ask his thoughts about mobile payment apps and to inquire about how much cash he has in his wallet.

The phone rang once and then there was silence on the other end of the line, except for the sound of a television in the background.

I waited a second. “Dad?” Two more seconds of continued silence and background TV noise. “Hello? Dad?”

At which point my mom, who has her own phone, began speaking very slowly on my dad’s voicemail greeting.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Show family. We can’t come to the phone. Please leave a message.”

Beep.

I guess the ApplePay doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Jon Show lives in Robbins Park with his wife, who he calls “The Mother of Dragons.” Their 16-year-old son is “Future Man” and their 11-year-old daughter is “The Blonde Bomber.” Their dog is actually named Lightning.