Disclaimer: This piece should not be used to judge the state of interpersonal relations in our family. My mom is a wonderful person, and I love and admire her. My parents have been happily married for 32 years, despite the fact they have owned a computer through most of their marriage.
I am not a tech-y person. My friends mocked me for refusing to upgrade to a smartphone until 2014. My approach to my computer woes is to shut it down, restart and cross my fingers that the problem will fix itself. So when I tell you that my mom makes me look like a computer genius, you can see the problem. Usually she asks my dad for help, but since his assistance is accompanied by a lesson in French expletives, I became her IT resource during my last trip home.
I realized she was having problems with Facebook Messenger when Nic’s girlfriend approached me about their communication difficulties: “Pat told Nic that I don’t answer my messages, but I do! She just never answers back”.
I opened Facebook and demonstrated the “complicated” process of clicking the message symbol in the upper right corner of the screen and we discovered that she had dozens of unread messages, dating back to early 2015. If you need to communicate with Mom, I recommend you email instead.
The next issue: Spotify, which I set up for her last time I was home. “It always plays the same songs,” she says, “Show me how to erase those and download new ones.”
“Mom, you didn’t download anything, Spotify is a streaming service. Just make a new playlist.”
Pause. Quizzical stare.
“What’s a playlist?”
Since I wasn’t making progress on the computer, we moved on to the iPhone. Unfortunately, she does not know any of her passwords, or where to find them, so setting up Facebook and Goodreads accounts was challenging. Luckily my dad, foreseeing this problem, installed the password manager, LastPass. Next, she wanted to learn to use the camera, which she grasped quickly. She was chuffed by her ability to take pictures at her retirement party, and indeed she took many. Some were of her finger, and most were too dark, but it was an accomplishment and I was proud of her.
That pride was short-lived, however, because at this party her English department colleagues gave her a Kindle, a thoughtful gift for my mom, who is an avid reader. I just wish they had thrown in a bottle of wine for Dad and I, who had to teach her how to use it. Dad set it up, and Mom browsed Goodreads trying to figure out what book to buy first. Then she screamed: “Help! I don’t know what happened, I was just browsing and suddenly the pages of ‘Go Set a Watchman’ popped up and now it’s stuck”. A lot of things ‘just happen’ on computers when Pat is around. I don’t believe in the occult, but who knows? Maybe she is the victim of a particularly mischievous poltergeist. That would explain how, a few years ago, she received emails about random men after she inadvertently signed up for a Swiss dating site (unless maybe my dad signed her on in hopes that she would find someone else to help her with her computer issues).
Returning to the Kindle saga, since nothing was stuck – she had merely opened a book sample – so I show her how to use the ‘back’ button. But when she opened the sample, a message was sent addressed to ‘Sarah’. My dad, in his haste to set up Kindle to get my mom out of his hair, connected her to someone else’s Amazon account. Surprisingly, once we connected the correct account the Kindle store switched to German (we are in Switzerland after all). Google search revealed that this is a common problem with a less-than-straightforward solution, so we navigated through10 different steps on the Amazon account in French, English, and, German, and managed to reset the country to ‘USA’. But it was too early to celebrate our victory. When trying to re-connect Goodreads after resetting the Kindle, we faced a new challenge: Pat has multiple accounts, and multiple incorrect passwords recorded in LastPass.
When she first joined Goodreads, my dad made her an account for her book, and a personal account. Now this makes perfect sense for someone who wants to use the site for marketing while retaining a second, more private online identity. It makes no sense for someone who already has accounts on a half a dozen other social networking sites and doesn’t know how to use any of them.
Finally, we got the Kindle set up and working. But we still don’t have a book on the thing though – Mom continues browsing and can’t decide what she wants to read.
Natalie, this is priceless! You had me laughing out loud. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”Trust me, your mom isn’t the only one who turns to her kids for computer advice. Pat, I hope you are enjoying your retirement and learn to master that Kindle Fire! Thank you both for my Saturday morning boost.
This is too funny! My own mom refuses to touch a computer and won’t even try a smartphone, but she does have a Nook (which, like as not, I’m roped into tech support for, more often than I bargained for!) You’re awfully kind to spend your vacation doing that! Thanks for a hearty chuckle!
You are a good woman! As is your mom. And your dad! (Yes, he has earned that very special compliment with his nurturing patience.) Kids these days have such a natural connection to their tech — we older ones will be remembered as the generation that bravely straddled the seismic crack between Before Computers (B.C.) and After Computers (A.C.).
LOL 🙂 (a wonderful word that my teenagers have taught me). I thought it meant ‘lots of love’ and was pleased when they used to send it to me. Now I know different! I totally gel with the plethora of passwords and the need to have one with a capital letter, one that’s a minimum of eight letters, one that has a number, etc. Roll on the day when we can all use a thumbprint to access everything and I no longer need to have a diary that I write codes in to remind myself of them all. That diary is the one thing I would save from my burning house! This was great fun Natalie, and I’m sure your mum greatly appreciated your tech tips xxx