My Mom and her new cell phone

I love my mom, I really do, but she is so annoyingly slow when it comes to technology. She wants to be up and "in" with everything that comes out. I got her to switch to Verizon since almost everyone we know is "IN" the network - so it just makes sense. But this woman acts like she's never held a phone before (and no, it's not her first cell phone).

First off, she's a righty, but is using her obviously weak left hand for everything I'm teaching her about the phone, so this slows her down even more. And by rights, she's not familiar with her new phone's buttons and doesn't really know the Verizon menus yet, but come the fuck on, use your eyes already.

All this training, without fail, ends up with me yelling at her for something - out of total frustration. I'd be a really bad help desk analyst. If I can't just grab the mouse and fix the problem, I'd be fired in a day's time - guaranteed.

So because I convinced her to download the Backup Assistant. This is a very good tool, everyone should have it if you use Verizon...this will save you so much time if you ever get a new phone - no more re-entering all of your contacts - so you could only imagine why I was pushing this on my mom. She has 53 contacts and actually took it upon herself, while I wasn't there to write down EACH number from her old phone and enter them in the new phone. She called me up all proud wanting to shout it out that she did this all by herself. I did praise the shit out of her, the woman finally took some initiative!!

But anyway, we go on the computer to create a My Account (you get backup assistant for free if you have a my account) and she wanted to do it on her own. I couldn't even sit there for a minute...the woman types with ONE finger. I know she was a typist back in the 60's and that was a long time ago, but really now, you can't remember that the keys are the same on a computer keyboard as they are on an ancient typewriter? I really did try to keep my cool but of course, ended up losing my patience and made her get up. (I bought a learn-to-type cd - good ol Mavis Beacon. Oh I'm going to wrap it up all pretty and make this a big event, please keep your fingers crossed for her.

So my mother learned today:

- How to download ringtones
- How to download phone applications
- How to access her camera phone
- How to record a voice mail (and with a happy face as she's doing it so she doesn't sound like a zombie)
- How to actually open her phone's manual.....I was highly impressed when she was able to tell ME where the speakerphone button was.

I think it was a very productive day, don't you?

Love you Mommy!