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Adventures in Parenting
My father and step-mother have taken their first into a much larger world. They got a PC. Second hand and pretty clunky by today's standards. It has a crank-handle to boot it up. Kidding, it has an ignition key and clutch.
When I saw it I half expected monkeys to be gathered around it smashing bones to the sound of Strauss. This is a big evolutionary for these parents (my mother and step-dad are the techno-inclined couple) and I was pleased to see that my father knew what a mouse was for: you pull the cord to start the CPU fan motor.
I couldn't hide the smile that was splayed across my face when asked questions like "what does this button do" and "how did I end up with my Paint picture as my background?" and multiple shortcuts to desktop items littering the desktop itself. How many shortcuts does one need to The MSN Network? How many of us even need one?
I donned my "Idiot's Guide" hat and explained that the OS allowed for three ways to do everything. I showed basic file management skills and explained why bitmaps are crap, diskettes too small and warned against the motherboard dust bunnies.
My father retired recently and now has all day to spend on that machine messing around in drawing packages and typing stuff in Word. What a sad plodding existence that... hey, waitaminute!
Apr.11.2002