Pin Interest

December 24, 2013

"The sunflower?" my mom asked?

"No, mom. Try again," I replied. 

"You sound like such a teacher right now," my sister said. "I'd have lost my patience by now.  Better you than me."

I was trying to teach my mom how to shut down her new Chromebook I'd gotten her for Christmas.  I asked her what icon looked like the button we had used to turn the Chromebook on, (the power-on button on the keyboard), and that's when she gestured at the sunflower on the screen, only the sunflower was the image associated with her Username I had picked for her when she set up her computer.

"Um, is it this thing?  That says, shutdown?" mom asked, trying again, as she selected the correct icon on the screen for shutting the Chromebook down.

"Yes, Mom!  Good, mom!" I exclaimed in a way you'd praise a new puppy for going pee outside.

We generally don't exchange gifts for the adults in my family at Christmas, but my aunt had recently gotten a computer, and my mom has taken a lot of interest in technology lately; so much interest, in fact, she ran up my sister's phone bill on Pinterest and claimed she hadn't been on the web on her phone—apparently she didn't understand that she was on the internet. I thought a computer would be something she could use since she had been using Facebook regularly on her phone before Christmas, and she's always just on the edge of using all the data on my sister's phone plan, though she blames it on my nephew listening to music.

Mid-October 2013

The night my mom signed up for Facebook, I was stunned.  How did she do that?, I thought to myself as a Facebook request showed up on my page from my mom.  It was her second Facebook page—someone in my family (either me or my sister) had set her up an account before. Apparently, she decided to abandon that one…or something.

7:00pm (first call after Facebook friend request)

"I need a picture for my profile," she said when I answered.  "I'm the weird gray person now.  I want to be Lady Gaga."

"Mom, that doesn't make sense.  You can't be Lady Gaga," I said.

"Other people are crazy things.  Why can't I be something?"

"Mom, you're supposed to have a picture of you—that's why it's called your profile picture.  You need people to know it's you.  People need to recognize you.  If you're Lady Gaga, they won't know who you are."

"I want to be Lady Gaga.  I don’t have a good picture of me."

"I have a picture of you."

"Okay, can you put a picture of me on there?"

"No, you have to."

"I can't.  Can you?"

"I need your username and password.  I'll put the picture of you, but I am not putting a picture of Lady Gaga, mom."

8:00pm (a conversation in which I have called my mom to explain tagging):

"Mom, you tagged some old man as Sandy in a photo," I said.

"That's Clarence!  That's Clarence!  He's with his daughter, and I wanted your sister to see it, so I tagged her."

"Mom, when you tag someone, you're saying that person IS THE SOMEONE YOU'VE TAGGED.  You've just made my sister some old man in a photo."

9:00pm (a conversation in which I inform mom she doesn't have to sign everything because she's signing everything on everyone's walls all over the place):

"Mom, when you post on my wall, it says your name.  You don't have to sign it mom."

"Oh."

"People know it's you because you have a picture of you there and your name."

"Oh, okay."

10:00pm (when I give up)

I look through my mom's friends.  She has about 70 friends in common with me.  I am pretty sure my mom and I don't know 70 of the same people.  I am certain that my mom doesn't know some of these people because I don't really know some of these people.  Oh, shit.

So, when I bought the computer, I thought it would be an opportunity for my mom to cruise the web, Skype with my sister back east, and check stuff out.  She's a smart, smart lady, but computers have never been her thing.  We got a computer when I was a junior in high school and my mom was afraid to touch that computer.  As she's gotten older, she's gotten less afraid of technology, and now that I have newfound patience, I thought this Christmas would be a good time.

December 24, 2013

I turned on the computer.  Chromebooks are different, and you need your gmail account to set it up.  That’s where we started.

“Mom, what’s your username and password?”

*blink* *blink*

“You know, the email and password you used to set up Facebook?”

“It’s GoldenPoppyXXXX,” she says.

“Great, now what’s the password?”

“Oh, I don’t know that.  Your sister set it up,” she says.

“Sandy, what’s mom’s password?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she replies.

“You’re the one that set it up.  You have to vaguely remember,” I say.

“I wrote it on a card,” mom says.

“Where’s the card?”

“At my house somewhere.”

“Okay, then we’re going to have to set up the computer later,” I say.

“But I want to do it now,” mom says.

“Sandy, no idea?  None?” I ask.

“It’s like her name and her birthday or something like that,” Sandy replies.

My sister gives me a combination of what she thinks it could be.  “It’s what I always use for people’s usernames, like when I do their taxes and stuff.  I always use their name and their birthday as their password,” she says.

While thinking to myself, that is SUPER helpful.  This could be any combination of my mom’s name and birthday ever, I type in something like 900 combinations and strike out every time.

“Maybe it has your middle name in there somewhere,” I say to my mom.

She looks back with reassuring, sparkling, and deeply hopeful eyes.

“Definitely not.  Her password definitely doesn’t have her middle name in it,” my sister says.

“Okay, great,” I say.  “If you REMEMBER WHAT IT IS, WHY DON’T YOU FUCKING TELL ME WHAT IT IS?”

“I don’t remember what it is, but I definitely know it doesn’t have her middle name in it.”

Jesus lord almighty.  Help us all.

While my sister and I are exchanging more ideas, my mom is rifling through her purse.  And what does she find?  Yes, the card.  On which contains the information we’ve spent the last 30 minutes trying to guess.

We turn the computer on and off a half a dozen times—this is when my mom figures out the sunflower does not shut down the computer.  Then I take the computer from my mom because I figure rather than reinventing the wheel, I might as well just set up her bookmarks for things she likes.  I set up Facebook, her email (which I don’t call GMAIL, I call EMAIL, so she doesn’t get confused), and Pinterest (which I don’t use, but I know my mom does).

“I want a horoscope,” she says.

“You mean, to read everyday?” I ask.

“Yes. I want to check my horoscope.”

“Okay.”  So, I find an astrology site, and I set the bookmark to say “HOROSCOPE”.  It’s easier this way—rather than forcing my mom to figure out the semantics of what these things mean, let’s just emblazon it—take out the mystery of the web—so I get less phone calls.  Thinking ahead.  Good call, Andrea.  Good call.

“Did you get Pin Interest on there?” mom asks.

“What, mom?”

“Pin Interest.”

“Mom, are you saying Pin Interest?”

“Yes, Pin Interest.”

And my sister and I die laughing.  The sad thing about my mom is every time my sister and I laugh when my mom does something funny, mom thinks we’re making fun of her.  She’s the last person I would make fun of on the planet.  If I catch anyone criticizing my mom or making fun of her or even giving her a wrong look, I will publicly and loudly shame that person (and she can tell you I have, in fact, done this in a Chinese restaurant in the middle of the day after lunch).  But as my mom ages, she gets funnier.  Not just in her mannerisms, but in her sincerity.  She tries so hard, and I love that about her.  She’s so earnest.  And the older I get, I realize I think I got my humor from her, so when she says something like “Pin Interest”—which the site is literally supposed to do, pin your interests—there is something endearing and funny about the way she says stuff. 

“Yes, mom.  Pin Interest is on there.”

So, then I let my mom play around on the Chromebook for a while as I’m talking to my sister. Until we both hear an exasperated sound.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” I ask.

“I don’t know what all this stuff is!” she says.

I look over, and she’s got her Facebook feed up.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Oh.  She’s annoyed that all this stuff is on Facebook,” my sister says. “She gets really frustrated because she doesn’t want to see all of this stuff.”

“Mom.  Those are all your friends.  This is your NewsFeed, and this is the stuff that people have posted.  This is what Facebook is about—you see what your friends are doing.  See, this person here?  This is my 2^nd cousin, you know, XXXX.”

“I don’t know him,” she says.

“Mom, you’re his FRIEND!  Of course you know him.”

“I don’t know who that man is.”

“Mom, you are friends with like 70 of my friends from Facebook,” I say.

“I think she just added them one day,” my sister says.

As my mom scrolls through her page, she comes across some old pictures I have posted of my friends in high school. “Oh, look,” she says.  “It’s Kristine! She’s working at K-Mart!”

“Mom, yes, that’s Kristine, but she worked at K-Mart when we were in high school.  This is an old photo.”  Side note—Kristine looks much different than this photo now, and my mom just saw her in person in September to be able to differentiate.

“But how did this photo get here?” she asks.

“I put it there.  I posted it.”

“But it wasn’t here yesterday,” she says.

*deep cleansing breath*

“I know, mom.  I posted it this morning.”

“Oh.”

“And see?  If we click on this, it will take us to all of these pictures.  We can hit this arrow, and it scrolls us through the photos that are here.  See?  Remember?  This is Ian, and John, and there’s Andrew—remember Andrew?  And here’s a picture of my Japanese class from high school.”

“What were you doing?” she asks.

“We were in class.  We were taking a class photo.”

“But what’s on your head?”           

*DEEP CLEANSING BREATH*

At this point, I feel like I am teaching an Alzheimer’s patient to use Facebook.  I often TEACHER my family—when I am upset or angry, I often put on my teacher voice and try and explain things in a mildly condescending manner—Fortunately, this voice is only reserved for my family, I don’t mildly-condescend my students, but when I am trying to be patient, it’s the only voice I can use.

Timestamp: A week or so post Chromebook set up

My mom calls.

“Hi, mom.  What’s up?”

“I clicked on horoscope.  And then I clicked on something, and it wanted $2.99.  I was just trying to read my horoscope.  And then I clicked and it wanted me to pay.”

“Mom, DON’T PAY FOR ANYTHING.  You probably just clicked on an ad.”

I got virus protection, didn’t I?

January 15, 2014

I post a note to one of my friends because it’s his birthday.  Under my message, here’s my mom’s message to my friend:

“Happy birthday from Andrea's mom!!”

I live my life in constant fear now.