Until I got married, Eric was the technical wiz in our family. VCRs, answering machines and computers were all new when I grew up and Eric was an early adopter. He could figure them out with seemingly no effort at all. And he would belittle the rest of us when we couldn’t. I was still writing out essays by hand to be later typed into the computer when Eric had a modem and was dialing into bulletin boards. I’m still not sure exactly what he did there, but it took up a lot of time.
The task of teaching my mother to use the computer naturally fell to Eric. Let it be said, in the gentlest way possible, my mother is not an early adopter…or really an adopter at all.
Eric made a check list of steps for her to follow if she wanted to use the computer. This was taped to the wall behind the computer desk. It started with “plug computer in”. Next was “turn computer on”. You get a sense of how basic this was.
Our computer room was on the third floor of the house, next to my bedroom. It was not uncommon to hear “ERIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!” screamed in extreme frustration from that room as my mother tried to use the computer. It got to the point where Eric and I tried to leave the house if we knew Mom was going up there. Sorry Mom.
My husband eclipsed Eric in tech geek knowledge and has become the help desk of the family. He has since banned my mother from ever being treasurer of an organization after having to create spreadsheets for her three Thanksgivings in a row. I think being a son-in-law gives him more ability to do that then being a son or daughter. We’ve never been able to ban her from anything.
Eric was always trying to upgrade my parent’s home technology. I can remember him installing a wireless network and buying them a DVD player.
He would be happy to know that my Dad has used his Mac to create a home sound system. Now if we could just teach my mother to use it.
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