So, a couple months back I took my mother a computer. I figured all those miles she was from her 15-month-old granddaughter could be bridged by the Internet. I could post photos and videos online, and she could view them at home in Tampa. That would at least cut down on the times she tells me to put the phone in the bath with Amelie so she can splash around with her. (Explaining to her how this could electrocute the kid, or at least ruin the phone, doesn’t seem to work.)
It took her a month to even acknowledge the computer, and another month of poking it with a stick like a baboon trying to figure out something that had fallen from the sky.
Eventually she convinced herself that radiation wouldn’t surge from the machine if she plugged it in, and still later, she took another big step when she called to ask how to turn it on. “Hit the ‘on’ button,” I told her. “That works best for me. You could also pray for divine intervention each time, but it takes longer.”
I considered that enough success for a single year, and put on my calendar to try and talk her into typing on the keyboard come next January.
And then the unthinkable happened: The woman with almost zero computer skills jumped dozens of steps on the way to computer enlightenment — or at least learning how to change the clock — and signed herself up for Internet service.
I was eating something at the time I heard this and inhaled whatever food it was so deep down into my windpipe that the paramedics had no choice but to bring in the jaws of life.
“You signed up for the Internet? How did you even know how to do that? Most of the time you can’t even pronounce it!”
In fact, I was just pleased that she had gone the legal route. For a while she was listening to a neighbor who hadn’t paid for Internet service in years thanks to someone’s wireless signal in the neighborhood he was ripping off for free.
“Why don’t I just do that?” she asked.
“Why? Because a woman who can barely turn on a computer should stick with petty Internet crimes at first, like online gambling and e-mail extortion. Get your feet wet first.”
But she’s hooked up. My mother is on the Internet. Who would have ever expected it?
And now I get the joy of a phone call from her every 20 minutes asking some new question about how to do this or that.
“So, Brian,” she calls me at work to say. “I want to Yahoo something. How do I Yahoo?”
I spend the next three days trying to explain what Yahoo is, that you don’t Yahoo anything, and how it is kind of like a place with stuff, but not really. At some point I lose her and she explains to me why the Internet is ridiculous and we should all go back to libraries.
It’s at that point that I realize I’ve been swallowed by a black hole, and the swirling abyss is ripping me apart atom by atom.
“I’ll send you an e-mail on it,” she tells me. “In the meantime, how I do I Yahoo?”
Luckily, most of the problems turn out to be relatively simple. For instance, she’ll want to look up something on the National Geographic site. So I spend about 20 minutes on the phone listening to what’s not working and trying to troubleshoot it when I think to ask this question: “Is the computer turned on?”
“No. Should it be?” she replies.
Oh jeez!
“Of course it should! Turn it on and call me back in two weeks when I get out of therapy.”
I must remember this is progress, and all about bringing a granddaughter closer to her grandmother. And I will also remember that the liquor store is just a mile or so away, and gray hair can always be dyed.