Technical things that can impress older people greatly

Look, we don't hesitate to send an email or look up a departing train. But for the older person such a thing can be an enormously demanding task and when you give a helping hand, you are immediately the saving angel.

Facebook kindly tells me every day when someone has a birthday and apart from my best friends, I don't remember anyone's birthday by heart anymore. But when I see that someone has a birthday, I will always send a message. Especially because I enjoy it so much myself and because it's a small effort. The best part is congratulating someone over 40 via text, because they are completely like “ooooh well, how nice of you!” while it really was the least effort in the world for you. Small gestures, little effort, big score.

I once stood at the station and saw an older man of about 60 struggling with those big yellow boards showing the departure times. But there were all delays and the original schedules were completely messed up. You could see the panic in his eyes, so I asked if I could help him. He needed to go to Breda or something, and with a few clicks in my NS app, I found the right platform for him. Then with the 9292OV app, I figured out the buses and he could be on his way. The gratitude and relief were unbelievable, and it literally cost me 2 minutes of time, zero brain capacity, and endless karma.

My grandma is unfortunately no longer with us, but I can remember moments when she was sweating on her forehead, frantically flipping through a phone book looking for a restaurant's phone number, and I could find it within half a second and call immediately. She talked about it all the time, how clever it was that I could do that so easily. Little did she know.

That your parents or grandparents ask if you could please send a photo during vacation and you obediently send  oma@hotmail.com a sunny vacation photo, and they are sooo happy because a photo is a photo! In the time of postcards, it was still a hassle with stamps and post offices, but now you can just send thousands of photos to anyone who wants them from the bar. But of course, we don't mention that.