Techno Mom

My mom is easily my biggest fan when it comes to writing. I swear she’s printed and kept every word I’ve ever published. It’s actually gotten to the point where if I send her a text message I’ll go to the house a week later and find that she’s scrapbooked it.

So of course I called her tonight when I was on my way home from the SVSU Alumni Author Showcase. I was very excited to take part in the event since it featured actual authors with, you know, actual books and yet somehow someone deemed me talented enough to participate.

During the conversation I was telling her about how I “unveiled” BigFunnyBlog.com to the audience and that set her off on a tangent about how she hasn’t been seeing my recents posts.

“Why aren’t you writing anymore?” she asks.

“What do you mean? I’m actually writing more than ever,” I reply.

“Well, why can’t I find it on the damn Internet?”

And with that sentence it was as if life had gone full circle. Here was my mom complaining that I hadn’t blogged in a long time and she walked right into the perfect subject matter for a blog.

By that, of course, I’m talking about Techno Mom.

Now let me begin by saying I love my mom dearly. I owe everything I’ve ever accomplished in this world to her and my dad.

But I’ll be honest in saying I don’t really love Techno Mom.

Who is Techno Mom, you ask? Well, Techno Mom is just like normal mom only completely confused and disoriented by anything that has to do with technology.

Sound familiar? It should, a lot of us have Techno Moms.

Case in point, my mom can’t wrap her head around my blogging infrastructure. For example, I have a personal Facebook page and just created a page dedicated to just BigFunnyBlog.com, the new Web site you’re on right now. To her, however, it’s all the same.

“So I liked your new page but why can’t I see anything you wrote?”

“What do you mean, mom?”

“Like if I go out there I don’t see any of your posts. It won’t show me any of your damn posts.”

“That’s because I haven’t posted anything yet.”

“But it said if I liked your page I could follow your blog.”

“You can, but I haven’t posted yet. It’s just like my own Facebook page. You won’t see anything on your feed unless I post something.”

“Well that’s stupid.”

I really like that last phrase, actually. The default for every Techno Mom is to take what they don’t understand or can’t figure out and immediately declare it stupid.

So I explain that I have a new Web site and that at any point if she wants to go out and read my stuff she can go right there, she doesn’t have to wait until I post a link on Facebook.

“Well how do I get to your new site?”

“It’s BigFunnyBlog.com we were just talking about it. Go there.”

“Well, do I have to type it in or do I just go there?”

This one, I’m not even sure what it means. How could she “just go there” without typing it in?

“You have to type it in. Type BigFunnyBlog.com.”

And then she repeats it back.

“What did you say? ‘W..W..BigBlog.com?’”

That’s another funny thing about Techno Moms. They are always confused about how many ‘Ws’ to put in the URL. Often they think it’s two, sometimes four, but never ever ever three.

I read it back to her and I can hear her typing away. I listen as she pecks out each key with astute precision like she’s trying to remove the water on the knee piece in the game Operation.

“It didn’t work.”

“Did you put the three Ws in at the beginning?”

[Silence]

“Ok, I’m there.”

“Alright, so scroll all the way down. You see on the bottom right there’s an area where you can put your name and email. Put that in there and you’ll automatically get an email every time I put out a new post.”

“Well, how will I know when I have a new email?” Will it show me on your new page that I liked?”

“No, you’ll check your email just like you always do every morning. It’ll just be in there with a link.”

“So will I just be able to read it there?”

“No, it’ll be a link you’ll have to click on. It’ll take you to my actual site.”

“Well that’s stupid.”

I let out a deep sigh. Eventually I talk her through the process and we hang up. I think to myself that one day I should write a blog post about my mom and her technical issues.

And then when I walk in the house and go up to my computer to blog for the night, I see this note on my desk.

Turns out the file she’s referring to that she opened thinking it was a story was the picture below:

So to recap, my mom didn’t see any new “stories” on her Facebook news feed so she decided to try my computer when she was at my house today. She tries to log onto Facebook, can’t remember her password since it’s not automatically stored on my computer like it is at her house, and so she clicks on a random PDF on my desktop thinking it’s a story and pulls up a picture of 19-year-old douche bag Jason flexing. Then she can’t figure out how to close it and leaves it there.

Needless to say, this note was the final nudge that made me decide to write the Techno Mom post. And honestly, I don’t think my mom will care because it just means I’ve written another blog that she can print, cut out, and scrap book.

Provided she can find it first.

Jason Wolverton is the creator of the hilarious Web site BigFunnyBlog.com. To read more of his funny stuff, be sure to like his Facebook page at Facebook.com/bigfunnyblog