What Shall We Do With Mom?
A post-Mother’s Day puzzle.
©SGHolland 2018
She came, she hugged, she chattered, she ate, she opened cards and received flowers. She presented small goodies to the younger Moms in the room. She did a good job of monopolizing the grandchildren.
But then, after brunch, she got immediately absorbed in the new laptop computer “the kids” (graying themselves) presented her with.
What WAS this flat thing with very flat keyboard keys, and a button nowhere to get one into this thing?
A laptop to help Mom be able to lie in a recliner and save her back!
And it talked! Cortana, you know.
This mom fixed that first. No lady sweet talking this mom into trying her instructions! Then she muted the noise. And deleted the ads that kept coming up.
Sat at the table between two savvy grandsons, Mom entered this and that into indicated boxes to get the computer to be hers.
But what good is this computer? Windows 10, for heaven’s sake? It really doesn’t know it belongs to anything but itself.
Just teach that alien computer to act like Windows 7 and then she would be happy!
I’ve been reading this book recommended by my eldest grandson: The Righteous Mind — WHY GOOD PEOPLE ARE DIVIDED BY POLITICS AND RELIGION, by a very readable author Jonathan Haidt.
On pages 39 and 40 he leads the reader through a study of certain minds which have been physically injured in a crucial spot just above the nose, under the forehead. Injuries specifically there cause the poor patient to lose all senses of sympathy, emotion. leaving them with only logic to make decisions with!
A description of a person who has lost the part of his brain that gives him emotion, feeling, sensitivity, intuition, etc, faced with the process of choosing a washing machine, per Haidt’s example, is fraught with step-by-step, part-by part-analysis of every feature of every individual machine of a large selection of washers. By the time all the choices have been inspected this poor soul whose emotions (intuition included) have been stunted by an accident is left with only logic, he is overwhelmed and confused. Out of his mind, I’d say.
This reminds me of this Mom when presented with all these new things to learn and choose from. But she still has her emotions, thank goodness. Yes, indeed. Anger, frustration, gratitude, BUT…
This Mom has, by now, learned to choose the devils she knows rather than the devils she doesn’t know and has not been wishing for!
“But Mom, you will figure it out and love it!”
Newer and better and fancier is getting old and stale, with my waning energies. All I want is to be able to use a few tools to enjoy life without being owned by them.
That is what old people begin doing! This good thing — is it a necessary devil?
Tomorrow — — after a good sleep — -I’ll think about it some more.
SGHolland ©2018
And then…
there is the matter of the car
— but that’s another story entirely…
