You Called Me!

I've been bailing my mom out of her computer calamities for at least the past decade.

It could be as simple as a basic email mishap or as complicated as the time she did a mail merge from an Excel spreadsheet to a Word document and somehow managed to delete the Excel Spreadsheet. Either way, despite my having at least two nephews who are much more computer literate than I, she calls me.

Unfortunately...

I don't mind that she calls me. I mind that she argues with me when I try to help her.

I end up like a raving, stuttering Italian mother with my hands waving and spittle forming in the corners of my mouth!

It's ugly.

Years ago I purchased a MacBook Pro and was able to take a break from my roll as Emergency  Technician because she had a Windows based computer and I could get out of things by saying, "I don't know mom, I have a Mac."

Well that hiatus ended when she bought at MacBook Air and chose not to take the three free lessons at the Apple Store.

I was once again her Help Desk.

Most of the time I don't mind until she argues and then I want to rip out my hair all while desperately attempting to be calm and speak in a non-techie language so she can understand what I'm saying.

Words like dohickey, thingy and hooha are used as if those things really exist.

If the computer doesn't respond when she hits a key, she hits another, and another, and another...

You get the point.

Anyway, the computer doesn't stop taking the commands, it just gets slower which causes her to press more and more keys while I yell, "Stop TOUCHING!" into the phone and my children look at me as if I were insane.

She called me the other night while trying to print her boarding pass and luggage receipt for her flight on US Airways and couldn't get it to appear in the print preview window properly.

My mother has one of the most impressive vocabularies of any person I know or have known but her love of the English language goes out the window when frustrated.

She could make a sailor blush.

I do the usual with her and walk her through the print screen stuff but can't figure out why it's coming up funky so I tell her to take a picture of the screen and send it to me in an email so I can see it.

She does as told, for a change, and sends it to me so that I can figure it out and call her back. Right before I hang up she says, "I'm going to reboot my computer while you're looking at the picture."

Yeah, um...don't do that because it negates the point of taking the picture in the FIRST PLACE!!!!

Did I mention that she has the patience of a gnat?

I finally get her to agree to stop touching things and wait for me to call her back.

I get the picture, it's odd and I still can't figure out how the hell she got there so I call back and ask her to send me the email that she received from US Airways so that I can see it and figure out how to print it.

She does and I immediately figure out that she had been trying to print something in Gmail from the top of the screen where it says: File, Edit, View, etc. instead of using the print option IN the email as opposed to the entire page. I tell her to open the email from US Airways and she replies, "Which one?"

God grant me the Serenity...

The one you just sent me.

"Where do I find that?"

To Accept the things I cannot change...

Um...your inbox?!

"I can't see it."

O! M! G!

She finally manages to find the email and I ask her to tell me what she sees in the upper right hand corner which turns into her telling me not to yell at her. I wait what feels like and eternity until she's finished and say, "Can I speak?"

I walk her through printing the email which again turns into me yelling, "Stop, Stop, STOP!!!" When she tried to change from printing 'All' pages to 'From # to #.' 'All' is the default and was selected but because the 'From 1 To 1' was visible she thought it was only going to print one page.

Dear God in Heaven...

She finally just clicked Print and lo and behold two pages appeared like magic in the top of the printer.

Mom breathed a sigh of relief and asked, "What would I do without you?"

I don't know, I just wish you wouldn't argue when you call me for help!