Sunday is Mother’s Day (don’t forget!) and to celebrate, we’re looking for fun stories about your mom*–her gadget addiction, tech disasters that put her in a bind, how a newly discovered gadget helped make her life better, easier, or funnier. Email your stories to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com with the subject line: Mom Story by this Thursday. We’d love to hear them, and we might even post them on BBG.
Update: Accompanying photos would be awesome!
*Or wife, or sister, or baby mama. Any mom will do.
I still giggling when I think about a conversation with my Nana a few years back. I was trying to explain to her what I do for a living (I’m a user experience consultant) but she was struggling to grasp the, admitedly hard to describe, concept.
Finally we reached some common ground. “Is that something to do with computers?” she asked. “Yes!” I enthusiastically replied. To which she responded, “Computers…hah! Just you wait: a year from now the kids will be into some other fad and no one will even remember computers.”
Love you, Nana!
Silly colonies. Mother’s Day was way back in March.
It takes a month and a half for the boat to get here from the homeland.
We lost our Mom late last year, but in her later years she really came to embrace technology like digital cameras, computers and the internet.
(-not to mention her killer Toshiba 50″ plasma screen TV! My sis ended up with that and it still has yet to be topped in the family! LOL)
My mom didn’t play around when she wanted something.
When she stopped being so ambulatory I was able to keep her up to date on my gardens by emailing her photos.
I now have a memorial tree planted where some of my best flowers grew in the past and will again this year.
She sent me that very typical “mom” type email stuff where she passed along a link to some little link or article with a photo of a puppy in a bucket or something a girlfriend of hers sent her she thought was clever or cute.
I didn’t think I’d miss those emails, but I do now.
I saw my mom regularly, but I’m glad we were able to share stuff this way as well.
My mom got skype when I left to live in sweden for 5 months. I think I talk to her more now then I ever did before I left.
I bought one of the very first 128K Macs as a college student back in 1984, and not long after, my family came to visit me at school. I excitedly showed my mom the computer. She grabbed the mouse and started waving it through the air. Nothing happened. I winced.
I’ve always been the person to introduce new technology to my family, from buying the first cd player when I was 11. A few years later I get the first dvd player in the house, which my mom avoided like the plague. I had rented a few from blockbuster and she was to return them… “Do they need to be re-wound?”
All my mother ever does is send me chain emails from 1998 and complain that her phone’s interface is different from yesterday.
When my mom first got an e-mail account, she called me in distress, unable to log in. She said “THAT computer won’t accept my password!” I reminded her what it was and that it was case-sensitive.
“But I can’t even see the letters. That’s the problem! It turns everything into black dots.”
“That’s for security. Hit return, Mom.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a dumb way to do it.”
Now I use Skype to call my kids from the office, check in on homework and see their cute faces. I even talk to the dog (who generally freaks out because he can’t smell me and doesn’t know what the heck to do with a disembodied mommy voice).
Technology has brought mommies a looooooooong way.