I am frustrated by my mother

The BBQ Pit
41

It can also get a bit harder to learn as one ages, and it’s always harder to re-learn something than to learn it fresh, because you’re having to un-learn the old way, too. The last car my parents bought was a high-end one (for them) with all the electronic bells and whistles available at the time. This was a couple that in 1964 bought a station wagon with a standard transmission and no radio because they figured the new automatic transmissions hadn’t had all the bugs worked out of them yet, and the radio cost extra.

The reason they bought the upgraded car was that they were getting old and had the money, plus they were getting old enough that learning new things was starting to be harder. Learning to operate all the electronic bits would be fun for them, then, but might be a burden in another five years. So they enjoyed the new while they could still enjoy new things.

42

Back in the late 80s, my dad bought an old 386 (when they were brand spankin’ new) and proceeded to program it. At that time, you had to basically learn DOS and set up your file structures all by yourself and load in the OS one floppy disk at a time. The machine came with a gajillion floppies and an owners’ manual that weighed approximately 65% of my current body weight. :smiley: Dad would have been in his late 30’s and was not college educated, but he was a tinkerer and managed to slog through a bunch of DOS textbooks and that friggin’ owners’ manual and finally ended up running Windows on the damn thing, which ran so slow, it could barely get out of its own way. Crashed constantly until he got another machine and upgraded the hell out of its memory.

Anyway, because of my dad’s little self-taught journey into the computer world, I have always considered him to be an early adopter and I’ve always respected his desire to learn new skills and his passion for keeping up with technology as it has developed. He’s upgraded many times since then and cut off his landline and got high-speed internet access before I did. He gets into all sorts of gadgets the minute they come out, if he finds them useful to him.

We were talking on the phone the other day and he mentioned wanting to get rid of his satellite dish system and rather than going back to cable, he wanted to go with internet TV. So I started explaining to him that there’s no one internet TV service that you subscribe to (like a cable company), that you have to cobble together the channels and shows you want and there’s dozens of sites on the internet just full of content waiting for you to access. I told him that, instead of having a single cable bill or a single satellite service bill, he’d end up with half a dozen subscriptions to Hulu and Amazon Prime and Netflix and og knows what else. He was down with all that.

So then I said, “Okay, dad, you’re pretty good with technology and I have the utmost confidence that you could maneuver through the internet TV landscape by yourself no problem. But what about The Lion? (That’s his nickname for my stepmonster.) Can she run the VCR or the DVD players? What about the remote? She can barely change channels as it is right now, right?”

Sheepishly, he agreed that she could barely run the microwave without asking for help. And there is not a digital clock in the house that shows the correct time unless he re-sets it after a power outage. So I asked him how in the hell he expected her to be able to sit down in front of the TV and watch Dancing With the Stars if she had to use a computer keyboard, log on to a website, figure out if she wants to download or stream, and then use a player app to view the show? Do you really think she can do all that? Does she know the difference between her browser and an application? Does she know how to use a mouse? She’s like 73 years old and didn’t even get her GED until she was almost 60 because she was afraid of the math! Come on, man. At a certain point, he had to realize that he’d be isolating her and shutting her out from the majority of the family entertainment if he went with that system. “She won’t be able to watch TV unless you’re home!” We had a laugh over that and now he’s actually considering just going back to cable to make things more simple for her.

This thread made me think of that. My dad, while in his 60s, is still pretty open to learning and is actually quite a good student. He listens carefully and asks really thoughtful questions–you can tell he’s integrating new knowledge with the existing. My stepmom is a horrible student. After she got her GED, she went to community college for a while, but never even bothered trying to pursue and AA or any kind of degree. He told me “Once she found out that she could learn, she wasn’t interested in trying any harder or doing anything with it. She just wanted to go to college to see if she could; she honestly thought she wasn’t very smart.”

So I’m not really sure if it’s more difficult to learn as you get older or if it’s more like the incentive starts to disappear. What would be the point of my stepmonster getting a degree in her 60’s? She was retired already and not interested in starting a new career. She was interested in making pine cone & glitter crafts, watching Dancing with the Stars, and playing with the occasional grandchild or great grandchild here and there. What’s her motivation to learn new?

I was also thinking, as I read through this, “I hope I don’t get like that and start refusing to try Teh New when I get older.” And I don’t think I will. Like my dad, I have this innate curiosity about the world around me and I like trying on Teh New for size. Sometimes I keep Teh New, sometimes I keep the old. But I hope I will always be interested in learning.

Now if only I could figure out a way to explain to my dad why texting is better than voice mail and email. So far, I got nuthin’.

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Most popular club in the world, man. Have a seat and a beer.

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a) My phone has texting. It doesn’t have email. So if you send me a text, I’ll get it immediately; if you send me an email, I may get it in the next five minutes, or tomorrow, depending on when I next check my email.

b) I can look at a text and reply to one while I’m in a meeting. I can neither listen to your voicemail message nor reply to it while I’m in a meeting.

c) Some of us are complete introverts and need to overcome an activation barrier to call you back after listening to your voicemail. No such activation barrier for texting.

(I mean, I get it. I was a very late adopter of texting myself.And sure, if you want to hear my voice, leave a voicemail, and if you want a long response and don’t mind if it’s delayed, email is the way to go. But texting definitely has a place in my life that’s distinct from email and voicemail. )

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a) I have email on my phone, so that won’t work with my dad. He doesn’t send email if it’s time-sensitive, he will call and leave a voice mail.

b) That’s a good one.

c) While my dad is also an introvert, he doesn’t really understand the “overcome the activation barrier” part. I do, totally. He doesn’t get it when sometimes I just don’t feel like talking to anyone, it’s not just him. He takes it personally and thinks it’s just him and I take all other calls. He doesn’t realize that I rarely take any calls.

He still thinks it’s just as convenient to leave a voice mail or email as it would be to text. What I did explain to him is that I have pretty bad hearing loss, so the phone doesn’t always work out well for me. I have to be in a quiet place to hear the other end. If I pick up in a public place, I won’t really be able to hear well. That’s when texting really comes in handy for me – I’m not cut off from communication because there’s too much distracting “noise” in the background. He got that, but he doesn’t have as much hearing damage (or is in denial about it, I don’t know how he doesn’t have hearing loss – he raced motorcycles for 25 years. That’s where mine came from: watching Daddy race. That and 20 years of loud concerts.) so he thinks that isn’t necessary for him.

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Not to nitpick, but my company (among others) do actually sell IPTV, so it is possible to get television, over the internet, from one provider- and even consolidate bills if triple-play or more is offered.

That being said- it usually requires an additional set top box, and remote, etc. so probably would still be a pain for Mom…

47

I enjoyed your parable very much, thanks for the great read.

When your elders are frustrating you try to remember how frustrating you were as a teen. Karma’s a bitch, as they say. But, joking aside, they are similar. There is little point in getting angry over dealing with a frustrating teen or elder, it will never contribute anything positive. Spare yourself.

But come down to it, and it’s very hard to accept, you cannot protect anyone from themselves. Like letting your 10yr old ride the bus alone, it’s hard, but what’s the alternative? Making yourself crazy with fear? How’s that going to help anyone?

You seem to have a really good grasp of what’s important, I think you’re going to do just fine regardless of what the next challenge might be. And you write wonderfully! Keep up the good work.

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Thanks for the tip, but I’m going to let this remain my dad’s problem. :wink:

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My company sells it also. And, while they get mad if you say this, from the customer experience side, it’s cable. As far as I know (my cable provider (I’m apparently three houses to far away to get my company’s offering)), anything beyond basic cable needs a set top box with it’s own remote - so no difference there.

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I was guessing Mom drove a Jag from the description of the ongoing problems and color.

But then he goes and says its all bullshit! What a hoax!