A Computer for My Parents or How I made a BIG MISTAKE!

I probably made the biggest mistake in my entire life last weekend and I thought I would share it with you. I decided to purchase a home computer for my parents. It is to be a Christmas present. Now, at seventy-four and seventy-five, they have never owned a computer and have never seen the Internet. My mom gets exasperated when people ask her for her e-mail address, explaining to them that she doesn’t have time for such nonsense and that the world will one day be very sorry when all this “electronic mess” goes down the toilet. My father just smiles and nods; he knows better than to have an opinion. It is for him that I purchased the computer because he has said time and time again that he would like to surf the Internet. I am more than positive that my mother will also send e-mails, something I am sure I will regret for years to come.

So Saturday, I enlisted the help of my computer-savvy husband along with my sister, not so computer savvy. She and I are of the same opinion: machines hate us and we return the favor. Our destination was Best Buy because I wanted to purchase it from a place where my parents could go and ask questions if they had a problem (for this I shall probably be banned from Best Buy once my parents get their computer). The first decision was whether to purchase a laptop or a regular home computer. My husband said that a regular computer would be fine to start with because he really didn’t want to get into the business of explaining WiFi to my parents. The best idea would be to keep them chained to one spot and not allow them to wander all over the country with a laptop.

We settled on a nice computer and then got a salesgirl to come help us. She went back and looked up the computer – nope, not in stock, there were none in the warehouse and there would be no hope of getting one before Christmas. I started to ask then why is it out on the display but my husband said we would just get another one. We went through three different computers before she finally said we would be able to get it before Christmas. This did not bode well. The computer gods were already mocking us. We purchased extra software, a year of Geek Squad help and some other sundries for the computer. Then we went to wait in line, for thirty minutes, to pay for the blasted thing. By then I was so cranky I just wanted to leave. I had to endure listening a nerdy Aussie behind me complain about Americans and how slow we were. I couldn’t take it any more and told him that if he was so fast how about practicing it and getting the H*LL back to Australia. He went to another line. This computer business is going to get me banned in other places as well. I never did want to travel to Australia; they have those awful small-eyed brown snakes…

The computer is supposed to come in next week and we are going down to set it up for my parents. They live about two hundred miles from me. However, I can’t be running down there to fix whatever problem they have with it once we have it installed (Thank you God!). Yes, I called my mom to tell her what we had done so it’s not a surprise and, though, she was pleased with the “nice present,” she couldn’t possibly get a space cleared for the computer this week. Her garden club was coming for tea and she just did not have the time. Then she started complaining about: the logistics of getting Internet set up; that my father would waste all his time on it; that no one better expect her to spend a lot of time e-mailing; that other old women might send her pictures and stuff but she didn’t want That to start; yada, yada, yada… By the time I got off of my cell phone, my blessed sister was rolling with laughter in the back seat. If we hadn’t been travelling at sixty-five miles per hour, there would have been a sister fight, complete with hair pulling.

So here I sit, waiting for the computer to come in – kind of like waiting for Doomsday. What was I thinking? I have been having nightmares about hours of conversation trying to explain the workings of the mouse. Good thing I bought the tech support from the Geek Squad. They will rue the day they ever got interested in computers when my mother gets a hold of them…

Have you ever started off doing something that you thought was a nice gesture only to discover that maybe you made a big mistake? Let me hear your story.