This morning in the shower I gave some serious thought to setting my mother up with a computer.

While clearly the more pressing issue is why I woke up stoned out of my gourd and what this means for my plan to be a smug middle-aged straight edger, I find myself giving the idea more than just the passing recoil it warrants.

Don’t get me wrong – my mom on the internet would be a terrible, terrible thing. This is the woman who, when told she should use Craigslist to find an apartment, called me up to ask if I knew Craig and if I could ask him if he had an apartment to rent. I once tried to give my mom my email address so she could pass it along to someone, and it .. did not work. Giving my mother a computer could only be an impossible exercise in frustration and potentially bring about the apocalypse. She would break the entire internet. Viruses would escape the computer and start infecting the stove and washing machine. The entire country of Nigeria would name a holiday in her honour. Chris Hansen would show up on her doorstep and she’d be all over Dateline all because she clicked on the dancing bunny. It would be bad. Very, very bad.

And yet .. it would be a challenge. I could choose to lay the gauntlet down and heed the call to arms. If I could successfully get my mother on the internet and using email, it would be my greatest triumph and seal my place in history as an epic mastermind of brilliance. Many of you have met my mother and understand exactly why I turned out the way I did, and you know just how difficult an undertaking this would be. I think I could do it. I really do.

Whether I SHOULD do it is obviously another matter altogether. I have the hardware, and I’d be able to get internet hooked up at her place for free. Do I have the patience? If I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror, do I really think I’d be able to pull this off without strangling her? Is my life really so dull that I need a challenge of this magnitude, in this format? All good questions.

I should sleep on this, and perhaps look into rehab for my brand new drug problem.