think carrie, think!

Last night, I got a call from my mom, asking me to check my email because she had sent me some pictures of a shirt that she wanted my opinion on. I did all of this without a second thought, gave my opinion (it was a nice shirt), and hung up.

It wasn’t until after I hung up that I realized that this call was very monumental. It marked the very first time that my mom emailed pictures to me without asking me for help on how to do it. She took the pictures, uploaded them to her laptop, wrote an email and attached the photos all by herself. I was very proud of her.

Not that I shouldn’t be – my mom was an excellent student. While I was at home, and both of us had time, she would ask me to teach her how to use her digital camera and be able to email pictures to other people. One of many lessons I ended up offering. So I sat next to her, patiently teaching her the little things that I sometimes forget can be hard for people who didn’t grow up with technology. And she listened diligently, transcribing every step very carefully to her notebook, which is now filled with a variety of instructions (”How to burn songs onto CD“, “How to add songs to iPod“, “How to make DVD” … my mom is very hip).

As time went on, eventually she asked less and less questions when trying to send pictures to other people. But there was always some little issue – never was she able to complete the entire process on her own. Until last night.

Mom complained when I left the country for grad school that her personal in-house teacher would no longer be there to help her with her technology problems. We’ve found a way around that, though. I have now become her personal phone support contact. And, in the rare cases that she gets IM working correctly, her personal online support agent :)

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 and is filed under life, technology.