My Mom’s Shortbus Adventure in Scotland
Oh, mumsy, you’re so special sometimes. You really are.
The whole reason we ended up in Scotland this year was so that mamacita could attend a conference. It’s the same one she attended last year when we went to England. You’d think she’d have the whole routine down, yeah, not so much.
Yesterday while we were eating lunch she told me that she had deleted the conference confirmation she had gotten via email from her phone. “Mom, you realize that you deleted it permanently, right?” I asked her. “No I didn’t, it’s still on my computer,” she responded. In the last month or so, she bought herself an iPhone and has been wicked super psyched to find out that she could read her emails on the phone. What she didn’t realize was that if she deleted an email on her iPhone, it would delete the email all together. The whole concept of the internet seems to escape her. We spent 20 minutes arguing about whether or not that confirmation email existed anymore, and was she shocked to find out that I was right and she was wrong.
Wait, it gets better.
We head back to the hotel so that we can figure out where she has to go for the conference which she insisted started today (Monday). It took her 20 minutes to boot up her stupid computer while I fooled around on facebook, twitter, and email. After she nearly gave herself a heart attack from trying to figure out how to work the damn thing, I finally told her where to go and at what time.
This morning she got up at 7 so she could be on time for the 8 start. She walked the 4 blocks to the conference center only to find the doors locked. She stood out there for half an hour (in the pouring rain), and then decided to push on the doors instead of pull on them. The doors opened. Inside was a receptionist who offered to help her. My mom told her she was there for a conference and the receptionist gave her a blank look.
Apparently the conference starts tomorrow, not today.
Nice work, mom!
Back in the dark ages of computers, when I was a field service tech, I had a WP “operator” that constantly ruined her floppy disks. I sat and watched her work one day because I couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong. Lo and behold, she would carefully remove the disk from its sleeve, work on it awhile, then if she had more work to do later, attach it to her paper holder with a frigging magnet.
I am one of the two people on the planet who doesn’t have an iPhone. I know with other phones/emails, you can usually keep a copy on the server. Just curious. Does this option not exist on the iPhone?
Also, I’m amused at how insistent and assured your mom was with her own technical prowess in light of the previous posts you’ve written regarding her technical skills. My mom does this b/c she is under the (mistaken) impression that I couldn’t possibly know more in ANY area than her (or her friends who are equally clueless).