Houston? Hello, Houston? Are you there Houston?

There's the weird phone message from the inside of someone's car, and the beginning is scrambled and incomprehensible. Who would call me from inside their car with a speaker phone---OnStar, oh, it's Betty, naturally. She has the 500 free minutes to burn inside her Cadillac.

She's on her way to dinner with my brother after playing computer Geeks all afternoon, and she's calling to let me know they are canceling all the arrangements we agreed on during the four hours a day hand-holding calls I had with her and the new laptop last week, and I get to hear where they're going to eat, and how far it is from main roads I don't even know the names of in her town, and I realize it's the minutes burning that's the thrill for her at that moment. And I really hope she's not the one driving the yacht while chatting. You can imagine.

I had to go out to the porch and sit for a spell. It was all just too much for me.

She defers to men every frickin' time, it never fails. I've built computers, used them for years, know her better than anyone on earth, and will sit (no longer) and talk her down for hours to get her aimed in the direction I know she needs to wind up in, and will wind up happiest in. Then she does a 180 because she talked to some guy for 15 minutes, and obviously he's the expert.

And will she call the guy when she's frustrated at how her progress and situation is lagging behind and she's impatient for the faster system, the zippier program, the instant results???

No. She'll call me.

Help.

So, after sending her a snooty email yesterday after coming back inside from the porch, I sent her a nice white picket fence and garden path email today, like the snooty email never happened, and went on and on and on about me. I have to chuckle at that, she has a-ways to catch up on her typing, and her emails so far have been 1 or 2 sentences. Heh heh heh. She now knows more about the health and growing habits of my tomatoes than anyone should ever have to endure. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! And the domestic dramas of my neighbors, including dialogue and how many police cars showed up, and which cops were cute, and what kind of pen they used and how short the night shirt was, and and and... Mwah-ha-har-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!

My brother-----you are Officially tagged IT.

Gotta fly!!

Betty Crashes on Planet Dell

My 68 year old mother just got a computer.

After years of nagging her to get one, I may have been wrong-headed.

Most of Wednesday and Thursday of this week has been spent on the phone with her in Florida talking her out of the tree she ran herself into when the Dell boxes arrived. We literally had to begin with, "Okay mom, open the boxes," and I kept speaking very calmly and slowly.

Somehow, I had assumed that with her many part time jobs over the last ten years, she'd come into contact with Windows and basic computer operating experience, maybe even created a few documents in Word, and she certainly did alot of computer cashiering. Didn't most of us learn the basics at work or for school? Those of us over 35, I mean?

Honestly, I had so much compassion for her, she was ready to chuck it all off the condo balcony, and refused to pour herself a glass of wine to regroup. "No, I need a clear head for this nonsense, I'm so out of my element as it is," so I didn't make fun of her. But I was astounded.

BTW, the Dell people could put more in the way of an Owners Welcome Package in the top of the box for the other newly brave computer buyers to orient themselves. No wonder the various Geek Squads are doing so well. And don't pack all the power cords in with the printer box, pack the laptop adapter and cords in with the laptop, sheesh. We had 10 minutes of freak out because she swore there were no cords for this thing. Her shiny new laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium, and her icon flags are different than my old XP Professional, and the frustration was dangerously mounting.
"I'm just going to shut it off and deal with this another day," she said after we finally got it fired up.
"NO, LEAVE IT ON!" I came at her through the phone. "Then you'll just walk by it everyday and dread starting this again,and weeks will go by ---we're doing this today!"
Big sigh from her. "You're right, that's just what would happen, and you'll never want to answer your phone again, thinking it's me with this stupid thing again, so okay, now what?"

Thursday we were haggling about dial up, DSL, broadband & WiFi, calling my brother to drive over and help her, how rude the Dell support guy was and how she couldn't understand a thing he said and how much he made fun of her, couldn't I fly there to just take care of all this and the eBay store thing, too? Plus, she needs a digital camera, and what's a megapixel?

"You know, I've never sent an email in my life," she finally confessed.

"You said you had done all the notifying of customers at the store about orders being received, repairs completed, you mean you weren't emailing people?"

"Why would I go through all that when I can just pick up the phone?"

My head is in my hands at this point. What have I done? Unleashed her into the world with a loaded gun?

My five year old Sony Vaio is still overheating along, whirring and inconsistently recognizing the CD/DVD-ROM drive, low RAM, crappy graphics capability, and I'm stuck with it for now. And here's mom, driving a Porsche laptop in comparison, and doesn't even know how to start the engine. I could cry. I realized I couldn't help her from here, the parts of my advice she actually listened to she wasn't doing anyway, so I told her to make an appointment with the Geek Squad and tell them she needs the DSL kit in a box along with their technical support to install it, and at least an hour scheduled to show her around Vista.

"I wish you were here to just do this!" she snapped.

"I wish I had the brand new laptop and you had my old one to punch keys randomly on," I replied wistfully.

"Why would I bother to go through all this with a five year old computer, someone's cast-off?"

I didn't say anything. I'm a smart kid.