Now that Andy Rooney is no longer around, I guess it’s up to me to fuss and gripe about the role gadgetry plays in complicating our lives.

My latest episode of aggravation was triggered by the feminine voice that emerged from one of the bags I was carrying into our mountain vacation cottage. Since the source was the small bag in which I carry my diabetic meds and paraphernalia, I guessed what it was. My glucose meter was talking to me.

I don’t know why I need a talking glucose meter. When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, the hospital gave me a complimentary meter that worked splendidly. All I had to do was insert a test strip into a little slot, prick my finger with a cock-and-fire gadget that spared me the discomfort of personally plunging the needle in, then dipping the end of the strip into a bead of blood. Within six seconds, the meter would flash my glucose score on a little screen. If it was between 80 and 120 milligrams per deciliter, I could relax and have dessert with my meal.

The meter and test strips came at a pretty steep price, but I learned that Medicare would pay for them. An organization that got my name from the hospital or somewhere volunteered to supply them through the mail and charge Medicare.

Eventually, the organization replaced my simple, straightforward meter with one that talked to me.

“Thank you for using this product,” came the cheerful feminine voice, which then asked me to please relax as I pricked my finger. The voice was obviously synthesized, which made me wonder who was thanking me. “Please apply blood into the strip,” it instructed me.

Six seconds after dipping the test strip into the red bead, my score would flash onto the screen. Just in case I couldn’t read it, the voice would tell me what it was.

I called the supplier with the information that I was literate and, in fact, could read much more clearly than I could hear. So I didn’t need a glucose meter with a voice, and I wondered whether Medicare couldn’t save precious money by providing a cheaper, voiceless version.

The representative on the other end informed me that the new meter was more accurate than the old and, besides that, it could save me a lot of pain because I could stab myself in the arm or palm instead of the tips of my fingers.

The truth is, I hardly notice the pain when I prick my fingers. I started by pricking a different finger every day, but eventually settled on my thumbs, and though I prick them day after day, they don’t get sore, and the pain doesn’t increase.

But I kept the talking meter and accepted a newer, updated version it when it came time for a replacement.

It was the new and updated version I heard talking to me as I walked into the vacation cottage. The movement had jarred the mechanical voice into operation, even without a test strip inserted into its slot.

The new meter showers me with superfluous, and inaccurate, information.

Like the old one, it thanks me for using it, then informs me of the date and time. I presume that the glucose reading is more accurate than the date and time, because this morning it told me it was 2 a.m. Aug. 8, 2008, when I knew very well it was 7 a.m. Nov. 7, 2011.

I wasn’t certain whether the meter was on standard or daylight-saving time. I knew that I could make it give the date and time accurately if I was willing to jump through all of the hoops in the owner’s manual. And it would even record my readings if I would jump through a few more hoops, though I’ve found it simpler just to open a page in Microsoft Office Word and write down the date and reading. My doctor has never asked for a detailed record of my glucose scores.

The meter is just one example of machines that talk to you, and I disliked them from the start. I encountered the first one while test driving a new 1983 Chrysler E-Class. It had a masculine voice that would provide helpful information such as “a door is ajar,” and probably “your oil pressure is low,” though I didn’t keep the car long enough to hear that. I took it back and, instead, bought an identical sedan without the voice.

Mechanical voices are hard to reason with, as I discover each time I call a creditor or utility service with a problem.

After I give the disembodied voice my credit card, Social Security or account number, it responds: “Thank you. Please hold while I look up that information for you.” Then there’s a shuffling noise that is supposed to mean that the voice is leafing through a Rolodex. It isn’t fooling me at all. I know it’s just lining up some questions designed to elicit from me a description of my problems in words a machine can understand. I don’t like playing “Twenty Questions” with a machine, so I usually punch the zero on my telephone and yell and scream until a real, thinking, feeling human comes on the line.

You have to be my age to remember when the femine voice you heard originated in a pretty throat belonging to someone who could think and respond, and who really wanted to help you.

Remember when you could pick up the receiver and hear a soft, melodic voice say “Number please”?

I miss you, Ma Bell.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 104 Belspring Lane, Anderson SC 29621, or email him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.