It’s been more than ten years since I lost my mom. Frankly, I’m glad she’s gone.
Now, before you accuse me of being a shallow, selfless, ingrate, let me explain. I loved my mom. I really did. But technology made the decade beginning in 2008 brutal for old people. First there were self-driving cars. Then came the Amazon Kindle, followed by the Mars rover and the Hadron Collider. Even I felt overwhelmed.
No sooner did my mom learn how to retrieve re-runs of Bonanza using her TV remote, someone went and moved all the controls to her cell phone. Her cell phone!
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “I’m supposed to operate the television with my telephone?”
“That’s right, mom. But, not with your telephone. Your iPhone. I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Cell Phones Collide with Alzheimer’s
I started out slowly by buying her a Jitterbug. You know, the kind of cell phone with buttons the size of Chiclets? Unfortunately, it was also about the time her Alzheimer’s kicked in. Every new skill she learned evaporated in less than 60 seconds.
Nevertheless, I forged ahead by walking her through how to make a simple call to her friends. But then, she forgot how and we had to start over. This went on for several weeks until she finally gave up and went back to her wall-phone.
Undeterred, I stopped by the next day to see how she was embracing her new cell phone.
“Mom,” I said, “If you push this button, you can send a text message to your friends.” She screwed up her face and asked, “What’s a text message?”
“Look,” I said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
What’s So Easy About Text Messaging?
“It’s easy to send a quick note to your friends,” I said. “But first, you’ll have to learn a few new abbreviations. “Let’s say you want to send a quick note to someone. In the old days, you’d have to write them a letter like this, wait two weeks and hope they wrote you back:”
“Hello close friend. What are you doing? Would you like to have dinner tonight? I thought your last message was hilarious. At first I thought you were kidding me. I’m having another rough day. My supervisor is upset. I asked him if he was confused and had the proper authority. On another subject, I’m off in an hour. Would you like to have some fun? Thank you for listening. I have to go. I’ll see you later.”
“Now, you can get an instant response,” I said. “To save time, just use abbreviated text. I’ll show you how it’s done:”
GAS BFF WRUD? DU WANT TO HAVE DNR 2N8? I WAS BAG OVR YOUR LST EMSG YCMU! I THOUGHT UHGTBSM IM HAVING ADIH MY BOSS HAS HUHA I ASKED HM DYNWUTB? WDALYIC? OATUS IM OFF N 1 HR WAN2 420 AFTER WRK? T4BU G2GICYAL8ER
“See how easy that is?” I think I lost her somewhere after having fun after work. I forgot she was 84 and hadn’t had a job for over 35 years.
The next thing I thought I’d introduce her to was taking a selfie. You know, those self-serving snapshots people take of themselves at Disneyland to prove to the world that they’re not half as boring as everyone thinks they are? So, we went outside to her garden.
My Selfie Mother
A lot has changed in the past 50 years. When I was a kid, we used to take photos of the mountains. Years later, we’d goad a stranger into taking a picture of us in front of the mountains. Now, we take pictures of ourselves with the mountains in the background.
“Mom, let’s take a selfie of us sitting next to the Koi pond. Sit here on this bench with me and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“But, how will you do that? We need someone over there to take our picture.”
“No, mom. These are called selfies. I take a picture of both of us sitting here together.”
“But, how are you going to sit here if you’re holding the camera way over there?”
We went around and around on that one. We skipped the selfie.
It was getting late, so I asked her, “Would you like to have dinner?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “But, I don’t feel like cooking or going out.”
“That’s alright, maw. I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Domino’s Pizza Drones vs. Hershel Rothstein
I showed her how to install the latest Domino’s Pizza app on her Jitterbug, how to drag each ingredient onto her pie, click ‘Complete your order,’ use the Apple Pay app and monitor its progress using their video cam.
Twenty minutes later, we heard a commotion outside her door. There was a crowd of octogenarians on her doorstep as the Domino’s Delivery Drone circled overhead with our pizza.
“It’s OK. Stay calm everyone,” said her next-door neighbor, Hershel Rothstein. With that, he brought down the drone with his garden hose. “I took care of that pesky toy,” he bragged. Apparently, he mistook the drone for an invader from Mars, then called the police. So much for dinner.
By the time everyone at her retirement community settled down, mother was too excited to eat, so she just went to bed.
I toyed with the idea of introducing her to Wifi, Netflix, Napster, YouTube and Hulu, but I thought she’d had enough new technology for one lifetime. Three weeks later, she left us.
I never had the chance to teach her about Wikipedia, robots and Alexa. But that’s alright. I’m sure she’s smiling down from heaven at us, teaching all the angels how to navigate social media.
“It’s really quite simple,” she said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
