My Mom and the Internet

My Mom called, letting me know they were looking at specific dates to come up and see Baby Kaos after he’s born. He’s due at the end of August. They’re looking at coming up the third week of September.

In booking flights for her and my Dad, she did it the old fashioned way: she spent her day calling the airlines.

It isn’t very easy to get to Our Little Town; not like when we lived in Vegas. In order to get here, you need to fly into the Big City, then switch airports (there’s a free shuttle) and fly about 30 minutes to Our Little Town on a little single-engine plane; or you rent a car and drive for 2-1/2 to 3 hours. It takes some work to get here, and that’s something we were conscience of when we moved; we didn’t want to have to run the hotel for a house we had when we lived in Vegas (no disrespect to the friends who came to visit!). So, she needed to contact several different airlines for the flight to the Big City; then she needed to contact the one airline that flies from the Big City to Our Little Town.

But I digress.

After she called the airlines, she called me, because she’s always looking for an excuse to call me.

She told me her flight plans, but that she hadn’t booked anything yet because she wanted to double-check that the dates would work for us. The airline was holding tickets for her and My Dad for 24 hours. The dates were fine, just fine.

We hung up so she could book the tickets. Then she called me right back, letting me know the cost of the flights, and that they were going to drive from the Big City to Our Little Town (she doesn’t want to get on a single-engine plane, which is understandable). She wanted to know if I thought she could’ve booked cheaper flights if she had booked it on the Internet.

“Probably,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “we don’t have the Internet, so I guess we’ll just have to live with what we paid for.” My Mother is very gifted at being passive-aggressive. I’ve learned to ignore most of it.

In May, the night before they left for their trip to Hawaii, she called and said, “I tried calling the airline because they said you could check in for your flight before arriving at the airport, but then when I called, they said you can only do that over the Internet. But, we don’t have the Internet, so I guess we’ll just have to live with checking in at the airport.”

I didn’t volunteer to check her in. Partly because of the passive-aggressive thing. Partly because I wasn't comfortable doing such a thing. And, fortunately, she didn’t ask.

“You may want to think about getting on-line, Mom. Zel is planning on doing a web page for the baby and we may even get a camera and you could watch video of him,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know. Your Dad didn’t really like having the Internet before.”

When My Parents had the Internet before, my brother was in middle and high school. He’ll be a college senior this fall.

Every time they would get on the web, they would get pissed off. Then my Mom would say, “Let’s call Amelia! She’ll know what to do!” as if I were a superhero. But, she’s always looking for an excuse to call me.

And I would tell her every time, “Mom, you have a slow connection and you need to upgrade your computer.” Really I was telling her in a nice way: “Mom, you own a piece of shit.”

But, she didn’t think she needed a new computer. Why spend the money on a new computer when this one works fine, just fine?

So, she put it off, figuring if you ignore the problem, it’ll just go away. Kind of like if your brakes squeak and you turn the radio up (which is not something I do, but I know some people who do).

“As for pictures of the baby,” she said, “you can just print them off and mail them to us. Or, can you email them to your Little Brother and then he can print them off? Is that even possible? I don’t know.”

“We’ll figure something out, Ma,” I said out loud. “Breathe,” I said inside my head.