“After dinner, we’ll show you our PowerPoint presentation,” my son said.
That’s not our normal Sunday evening, and the kids weren’t talking about schoolwork. The kids have been making PowerPoint presentations just for kicks featuring sports teams and now penguins. I’m not sure I can do anything beyond open the program. My husband and I tried to figure it out one day last year when we got our new computer. We sat scratching our heads and a few weeks later my son clicked away on it. “How did you do that?” I asked.
He gave me some pointers and I got lost in all the mumbo-jumbo.
I am a technology-challenged mom. My kids attend a science and technology school. It won’t be long before they know more than I do. I know my lack of skills limits me in many ways, but I get by with the help of Google and a husband with a pretty firm grasp in digital media.
But it’s starting to dawn on me that my kids may catch up to me sooner than expected.
They use iPods and iPads at school and I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve used them. My kids still have to show me how to turn them off, and my husband has to show me how to get to the screen I need. I just prefer to navigate my enormous computer screen.
When I began tweeting, I couldn’t wrap my head around the logic. I had to see it in action for a while and I couldn’t figure out why people kept tweeting the play-by-play of their favorite shows or who was talking to whom. I admit, my husband set up my Twitter account and even sent out my first tweets. I do manage my own now.
He helps me with the technical side of blogging and any computer issues I have. But for all of his knowledge, he can still be a dinosaur right along with me. When he left his last job of 13 years, of course he was sad. But leaving behind his cool Droid phone and going back to our pay-as-you-go plan stung a little. Well, it stung a lot. Being in the digital market, it’s hard for him to not have toys like the big kids do. But neither of us talks on the phone much and we don’t see a need to pay for a big plan.
Hey, at least it’s not a bag phone. Remember those? Anyone?
So when my husband started his new job with a company full of fresh, young employees, he described the meeting scenario: Everyone grabs a seat and places their hip mobile device in front of them on the boardroom table. Everyone but him. We screamed at my husband’s suggestion of him placing his outdated flip phone on the table so he could join the crowd.
One of his first days on the job, he called me because he couldn’t figure out how to turn his snazzy new computer on. If only the kids had been home to help. No doubt they would have known from school. I Googled it and watched a video to instruct him over the phone. At least I’m resourceful even if I am challenged.
At some point, I know my kids will surpass my brilliance in some aspects of my life, but I always assumed it would be in math. And I didn’t think it would be this early. If they keep this up, I’ll be going to them with my technology woes instead of my husband.
Is this what parenthood is like? Not letting your kids know they’re getting smarter than you? I’ll hide it for as long as I can, but it won’t be long before my kids are helping me with my blog design and programming my phone, when I finally do graduate from the flip. They already know how to push my buttons.
The thing I hate about technology is just when I think I have things figured out, everything gets upgraded and I’m lost again. I try to do it on my own and inevitably my ignorance shines. Like not so long ago, when I wanted to send a message to a fellow blogger and tweeted two direct messages…to myself.
“Vintage Mossimo for Target,” I say as I gracefully dodge a path of gumballs in my three-inch Dansko clogs. Really, anything matches a pair of Levis.
I’m not into the whole yoga pants as fashion thing. I do make an effort to dress in something remotely considered an outfit every day. But fashion forward? Not quite so.
My apparel hasn’t changed much since college, so I can’t say I technically dress like a mom. But my hemlines have certainly dropped a few inches and my necklines don’t have quite the same plunge. A few sneak-peeks in a kindergarten class taught me that cleavage can’t be handled by anyone over the infant stage. I didn’t want to be the popular volunteer. And it’s not like there’s much of a peep show going on in that area.
The movie stars at the Oscars may be sequined, feathered, and stilted, but I need comfort around the clock. I need clothes I can bend in, take a nap in, scrape my lunch off and go about my day in, and good, supportive shoes that don’t make my back scream with pain at the end of the day. If clogs and Birkenstocks are those shoes, so be it.
When my husband comes home from work and sees me in layers of warmth and my newest clearance find, slippers purchased more for heat than beauty, I know he wonders whether I’ve gotten a sitter for the night. My favorite slippers may look like butchered Ewoks, but those lovelies are the only things to keep my feet happy till the spring thaw.
No Ewoks were harmed in the making of these slippers.
I could sit up all night oohing and aahing over all the glamour on TV, but this momma needs her beauty sleep. And I have a stained carpet to walk in the morning.