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.
delicious juice dot com 
Are you out of your mind…
Awesome. Hilarious post.
Oh &
DON’T. DO. IT.
You know, I’ve often used “Can my mother follow these directions?” as my benchmark for writing good technical documentation.
But now? She’s actually gotten surprisingly savvy, so fuck that. I’m using YOUR mother as my benchmark. :D
Damn, I’ve missed something with the stoned-out-of-your-mind thing…
And as a child/survivor of a nutter mother (if we were to get our mothers together it might just be like that scene in Ghostbusters where the Key Master meets up with the Gate Keeper, but without humping Rick Moranis… ANYway) but one who’s mother already has a computer (and had one early on: the very cool Commodore Vic 20! Yeah, woot!).
Erm, I forgot what I was trying to say. But yeah, are you *sure* you wanna do this? Give the Gate Keeper a Key, I mean? :D
sweet jebus, no.
Wait a minute, that jacket clearly says ” I am no babie! ” so if you really wanna pull this off, it’s ” daughter has an … idea ”
In the spirit of ” it’s better to burn out than rust away ” :
My wife and I took on this challenge ourselves, and when it started, both our Moms were older than your’s, and they are now way way older. Results vary.
My Mom started at age 67, because we kids were bugging the heck out of her. She took classes at a local 2 year college to start off and get past the terrible part, and then I just pointed at things she could do. She’s been in a business environment , and loved playing the real estate game, so I pointed at spreadsheets, mapping and economic info for real estate, traffic webcams in Spain ( prior to taking a trip there ), and she jumped in. Now’s she into her digital camera and other techie toys, and can’t stand surfing unless it’s DSL. Mission accomplished.
My wife’s Mom… different results so far. My brother-in-law set her up, and makes trips to Mom to upgrade equipment as required, and to check out Mystery Problems. My wife visits when she can, and retrains her on basics. This woman is one of those cat ladies, so sometimes stuff fails due to cat pee, other times, stuff gets unplugged, moved, and never plugged back in.
On the flip side, she lives a very solitary life, and the kids are just trying to provide a way to maintain contact with family and the scary outside world. She lives a 10 hour drive from her closest family members, so the painful push to e-connectivity is to maintain the few threads that remain.
Maybe you’ll have to trade skills with your Mom, like adult to adult, to make it palatable to her. She may have some skills you haven’t thought about for a while that she would like to pass down to her daughter. Ask.
Ken
set my mom up with an email account a few weeks ago
actual email i received from her this morning:
“HOW ARE YOU AND LITTLE AMY DOING I PUSHED MY CAPSLOCK BUTTON TO PUT A QUESTON MARK ON THE END OF DOING, BUT IT ONLY GAVE ME THE SLANT MARK YA’LL BEEN DOING THIS LOTS LONGER THAN ME . I’LL KEEP WORKING ON MY STUPIDITY HOLY COW THIS JUNK DRIVES ME CRAZY BUT I, YOUR ONE AND ONLY MOM LOVES ALL YOU GUYS. I NEED MORE TRAINING . SO OK AND GOOD BYE me“