Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions Read Free Page A

there’s anything Wayne
loves more than a new tool, it’s a free tool.
    His first impulse is to do a Google search
for “belt sander” to see if the manufacturer has a thousand-page
schematic he can print out and stuff in a desk drawer until 2037. I
remind him that we have just dismantled the computer and moved it
out of the living room so we can rip up the carpet.
    He mumbles things I’ve only heard on cable
TV and sits down in the middle of the bare wooden floor, pondering
the sander from every angle. I watch him from across the room,
fascinated, the same way Jane Goodall watches chimps. Before he can
start grooming me for lice, I suggest that he call my dad, who owns
every power tool known to mankind and sorts them in his garage by
size and function. (He’s retired and has nothing better to do than
fix things that aren’t broken yet.)
    Wayne ignores me and taps
the sander with a ball peen hammer. Tap.
Tap. Tap . I admire his manly way of taking
charge. He grunts, then snorts. Then grunts again. I admire him
some more.
    I cross the room to the
phone and call my dad, asking him if he owns a similar belt sander.
Naturally, he does. Wayne sits with his back to me, his derriere
collecting jagged edges of floorboard with the same speed my
daughter collects Barbie shoes. I say loudly and not-at-all subtly,
“Dad, he’s right here ,” and then hand Wayne the phone. It is a short
conversation.
    “ Uh-huh . . . .
Ohhhhh.”
    Wayne grabs a screwdriver, winds up, and
whacks the side of the sander, which makes a small clicking
noise.
    “ Huh. You’re right. It
worked.”
    Another home repair
problem solved. And no head lice. Jane Goodall would be so
proud.

Brave New World . . . Scared Old Mom
     
    Technology turned our
mother-daughter relationship upside down. Without being asked, I
had become the mommy of my mommy. I was the one in charge, teaching
her so that she might one day toddle out on her own and forge her
way in the Brave New World.
    The Brave New World, that is, of
cyberspace.
     
    It started innocently
enough back in the mid-nineties. While most older folks were moving
to Florida, my parents retired at age fifty-five and moved two
thousand miles away to Las Vegas. It was drier and warmer than
Pennsylvania, they said. It was dirt cheap to live there, they
said. It was their one big adventure in life, they said. This’ll
never work, I said.
    My brother and I bit our lips and let them
go with a kiss and a prayer—and a roll of nickels.
    It soon became obvious
that the distance was going to be more daunting than anyone had
anticipated. Despite the technology of the telephone, contact
became more sporadic because it was costly—and because of the time
difference. They now lived in a world of early rising, 110-degree
“it’s-a-dry-heat,” and four p.m. cheap buffets on the Strip. By the time the phone
rates dropped at the end of their day, they themselves had dropped
hours earlier, snoozing during Murder, She
Wrote.
    I’ve been online since
1988 and I know the value of quick, cheap communication such as
e-mail. One day a few years ago I casually mentioned to a friend
that it would be nice to get a cheap, secondhand computer for my
parents so they could get online and keep in touch better. Soon I
was offered a free low-end 286 computer and monitor.
[ Author’s Note: There’s no such thing as a free lunch—or a free computer.]
With a little tweaking, my parents could use it to get
started.
    Several hundred dollars later, I was
belatedly rethinking my strategy.
    My mother seemed more eager than my dad to
venture into this new technology. She had, after all, used
customized computer programs in her job as a quality control
technician for the Crayola crayon company for years. (My father’s
expertise in high technology had been limited to hot-wiring and
souping up the VCR—apparently so that it would flash “1:00” instead
of “12:00.”)
    I timed the arrival of the upgraded computer
at their house to