Technophobia
Over the last few weeks I have been able to e-mail my mom copies of my
little stories because my sister Lisa finally corrected a mistake we
made a few years ago. It
might have been two years ago that Lisa came up with the idea of
getting mom a computer so that her scattered sons and daughters could
keep her up to date with e-mails and photos. I jumped on board quickly
and went along with the idea. I figured my mom, who is smart and still
has great vision, would gladly embrace the wonders of the computer age
once she was exposed to it. The computer was purchased and put in my
dads old office, at which time Lisa gave my mom a cursory lesson on how
to operate it. I then took the time to fly up to Chicago to spend three
days with my mom and set up the computer for her. First I got her an
internet account, and set up her e-mail. Then I set up the computer so
that all she had to do was click on an icon to dial up her e-mail.
Simple. While
I was teaching my mom the intricacies of accessing her e-mail she kept
remarking on how much easier it was with me than with Lisa. "Lisa goes
so fast. All I hear her tell me is to click on this and click on that.
Before I know it she's on to something else. What does 'click on'
mean?". So
for three days I had my mom go through the steps over and over again,
from turning on the computer and accessing her mail, to turning it off.
Even though she seemed to have a problem with the concept of moving the
mouse around to make the arrow on the screen move, and never really
understood when I said "click on that", she none the less made it all
work and I was satisfied that I would be sending mom pictures from
Florida. When
I returned home it was with great anticipation that I sent my mom her
first e-mail and photos from Florida. When I called her, she
acknowledged that indeed she had received my mail and pictures. What she
didn't tell me was that one of her grandchildren had actually signed on
and retrieved the mail for her. In
fact the whole time my mom had her computer the only one who used it
were her grandchildren and my brother Dave when he visited. After a year
and a half, I checked with the internet provider that I had set her up
with, and it turned out she had used only about thirty minutes of her
forty hours per month. That is, thirty minutes in the entire year and a
half. So I immediately canceled her internet and informed my sister Lisa
that we were beating a dead horse. No need to provide my nephews with a
portal to porn. To
rectify our mistake, Lisa purchased my mom a service that delivers
e-mail to my moms kitchen automatically. It consists of a printer and a
computer that automatically dials in and retrieves my moms e-mail, then
prints it all out, photos and all. No muss, no fuss. So if you are
talking to my mom on the phone and it sounds like someone is dialing
out, it's just her machine retrieving my latest story that I e-mail her
everyday.
No comments:
Post a Comment