Whenever one of my parents calls me to help them with something on the computer, i feel like the guy at mission control who has to tell the monkey in the unmanned space station how to fix the pod bay door.i know what im talking about, and that my directions are clear and precise, but their little computer-unintuitive monkey brains leave so much room for misinterpretation that something as simple as 'printing an on-screen graphic' turns into a journey so quixotic it would make leopold bloom blush.
monday night i spent forty minutes outside a bar trying to explain to my father how he could print an electoral map, from a 'printable version' wikipedia page, no less. various things kept going wrong - the printer would truncate the image, por ejemplo - and every time i thought we solved the last problem ('go to page setup and choose landscape'), another would sping up ('now the 'print' command is grayed out in the drop-down menu' [i think he was accidentally clicking outside the web browser after page setup, meaning he was in the finder, which of course doesn't print anything]).
ten minutes in, i was already at the end of my rope and i was just blowing up on the old man.
'every other computer in the world works one way, but im sure yours works another!'
'if you had bothered to pay attention the other hundred times ive walked you through this, youd know how to do it by now!'
'i wish i had never been born!'
ok, i never said that last one. but i was pretty harsh; afterwards, i felt very guilty for getting so frustrated.
since then, ive thought about how incredibly frustrating it must be as a parent to watch your child make much more significant mistakes than errant mouseclicks, knowing that our little, inexperienced reptile brains dont know any better.
all those times they had to soothe my sadness over some inane, little lord fauntleroy want, like us not living on the upper east side.
all those times pops came home to find me watching threes company reruns yet again, instead of reading a book, let alone doing homework.
all those times i forced my mom to help me dissect some precarious romance i was fighting for that she knew was never gonna go anywhere, anyway.
all those times i was getting high when i should have been doing anything else.
all those times i blatantly squandered my money.
all those times they witnessed me being some kind of assh*le to my peers.
finally, but particularly, all those times when i ran my mouth about some life choice they had made, and how i knew better cuz i had it all figured out, cuz while everyone else in the world had to have experience to know anything, i was somehow different.
generally speaking, my parents kept their relative cool during these incidents, even though many of them must have been excruciating to watch.
and there i was, going postal on my dad for not being able to print a graphic.
who the hell do i think i am?*
*and how the hell did he keep effing the printing up?
1 comment:
this is epic.
my mother is actually very good at the computer considering english is not her first language and she was never formally taught how to "deal" with operating systems in general.
but she does constantly ask me to confirm how awesome she is for being able to burn a music cd or change her screensaver or download updated software. it's getting a little tiresome. she says, "tell me, if there is another middle aged korean woman who can do (xyz) tell her to stand up and raise her hand... tell me!"
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