What is it with the older generation and technology? What is it that they’re having trouble getting about the whole deal? While I was in Mississippi over Thanksgiving, I had three series of events occur that absolutely blew my mind…

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when I woke up, I did so to the slightly irritated voice of a less than happy stepmother, “Did you do something to the phone last night, Matt? It’s not working this morning.” Of course it had to be me. Nobody else could have done it right? I finally got out of bed and began stumbling around their house, trying to find the origin of the voice that had just awoken me. As Joann walked out of the upstairs office and down the stairs, she added, “the computer isn’t working either. I hope you haven’t really broken something, Matt.” I sauntered into the office myself, without a word. I suppose in a roundabout way it was sort of my fault, really, in the same way that it would be your fault if you put a bb gun in a 12 year old’s hand and he promptly shot his sister in the ass with it. Or something. The night before, during a very bad thunderstorm, I had been on the computer when Dad and Joann had told me to turn them off and to come downstairs, to huddle in a hallway closet while a thunderstorm passed over. More specifically, at the time I had been on MY computer, after having pulled the cable connecting their computer to their cable modem from the back of their machine and plugged it into mine. Upon turning the computers off, I had put my computer in my room, leaving the cable dangling in the office. So Joann walked int the office on Wednesday morning, wanting to use the computer, and in attempting to do so, promptly plugged the cable into the wall outlet. Screwing up both the computer and phone services. And then blaming it on me.

On Wednesday night, we were planning on having Thanksgiving dinner, with my Dad, Joann, my grandmother, my sister, her boyfriend and myself all attending. Joann wanted to watch a television program that was going to be on in the middle of dinner, and asked that Dad and I tape it for her. That afternoon we were attempting to do so, but having problems. After checking out their setup, I suggested that maybe the cable was running straight from the digital cable box to the television, and never running through the VCR. “I can fix it by doing this and this, ” I said as I showed him the solution. “No, no, I don’t want you to mess anything up, I’ll just call the guy that set the whole thing up and see if he can come out and look at it.” This was at 5:30, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled”, I thought to myself. Well, the unfortunate man answered the phone, and while he wasn’t willing to come to the house, he was able to tell my Dad how to fix the problem over the phone. And do you know what the man told him? THE EXACT SAME THING I HAD. So we end up doing what I initially said we should have done, and by the end of the process, I am so frustrated that I just have to ask, “Dad, why don’t you just get the digitial cable box with the built in digital video recorder? You can record whatever you want, whenever you want, by pushing one button, and it’s only like ten bucks more a month.” His reply? “What’s that? I’ve never even heard of that.”

On Thanksgiving night, after a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at my mom’s house, she asked me to go takea look at her computer to see if I could do something to fix it. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, but she knew it wasn’t quite right. Turns out the reason that the computer was running slow when she was on the internet was because she was using a dial-up connection. An MSN dial-up connection to be exact. I told here that it would be much faster and easier to use if she would just switch to cable internet service. She didn’t think she knew how, and asked me if I would do it for her. (Sidenote: she called me the other night asking for directions on how to work her DVD player. The one that I bought her for Christmas last year, and that she finally had someone hook up in September. Sheesh.)

So my question is, why are they like that? I have my own theories. I believe that ignorance breeds fear, and the older generation is simply ignorant of most new technology. But why? It’s not as if all of this stuff was invented to make our lives harder. It’s not like the pretty, shiny machines want to hurt them. I just don’t get it. But I do ask this of you. Please, help the old people understand.