Longing for Simpler Times

I was once being interviewed and the interviewer said, "Is there anything you can't do?" Off the top of my head I said, "Ironing."
That was true. I'm a terrible ironer, unlike my mother who ironed my father's underpants, and the sheets. But recently I've noticed there are other survival skills of the Twentyfirst century that I sadly lack.

For example, I am hopeless at using sticky tape to wrap up packages. I get the tape twisted and stuck to my clothing and generally waste twice as much as I put on the package, which ends up looking like a weird and wonderful mess.

I also confess to being useless at opening things. I can't tell you how many times I've found the words Open This End right after I've just opened the other. If I try to make a hole for a straw in those small milk cartons I end up getting squirted all over.

Oh, and I can't write the @ sign. Just can't do it. Never learned and can't seem to get the hang of it. So when I copy down someone's email address, I can't read it later because I don't know which is the @ and which is an a or an e or a c.

So I'm wondering if perhaps I should have been born in the times that I write about--the early Twentieth Century when Molly Murphy lived in New York City, or even the 1930s, when Lady Georgie was a bright young thing in London. They were simpler times when flour was scooped out of a big barrel in the grocer's shop, when parcels were tied up with string and sealed with wax and when addresses were Twentyfour Oak Lane instead hotmama@hotmail.com AND when there was a convenient maid who did the ironing.
Maybe that's why I choose to write about this era, because secretly I know that I'd fit in so well.

So, dear Jungle Red Sisters, all of whom appear so talented and so together--are there any little things that you can't do, any survival skills that you don't possess?