Mouse Maniac: My Mom's First Computer Lesson

When my mother went on disability about seven years ago, I decided to give her one of my old computers to help her pass the time. She was 48 then and had a little bit of computer experience from her community college courses.

I knew it had been about 2 years or so since she'd taken her classes, but I figured the basics would come back to her quickly enough. I pretty much just set it up for her and let her go at it on her own. As time went on, I realized the computer was hardly being touched.

Finally after a few weeks I said, "Mom why don't you ever use the computer I gave you?"

She said, "I don't know how."

I brought up that fact that she used computers all the time when she went back to school for her degree. She said, "Yeah, but I don't remember any of it now. Besides, those were PCs and you gave me a Macintosh."

Okay, well, she kinda got me on that one.

I also knew she was very intimidated by computers and was constantly afraid that she was going to hit the wrong key and delete everything. Since she had been forced to go on disability only about a year after she started a new career she truly loved, her self-esteem was at an all-time low.

Even though I'd been using computers for years, I had to step back and be patient enough to try and explain things slowly. I just didn't realize quite how slowly I was going to have to go.

I figured out it about ten minutes into our first lesson.

First we went over how to power everything on, how to shut it down and the basics of navigating around to her documents and applications. I sat and demonstrated everything and she seemed okay with what I was teaching her.

Unfortunately though, my sister chose that moment to call and tie Mom up on the phone for an hour. Naturally I went into another room and started doing something else, having assumed our lesson was done for that day.

A little while later I came downstairs and she was sitting in front of the computer frustrated. The screen saver had kicked in and she couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

In all fairness to her, she had tried hitting the space bar and it didn't work. Well, it was an old computer and wasn't very responsive coming out of sleep mode, so I could hardly blame her for that.

Despite my frustration that she give up too easily and didn't try to figure something else out, I calmly said, "Sometimes the keys stick. Just shake the mouse a little and it will wake up."

What I meant was that it responded better to mouse movement and she just needed to move the mouse around a little to wake the computer up.

What she did was pick the mouse up and start thrashing it around in mid-air until the screen went completely black and the cord popped out.

Needless to say, I nearly fell over laughing. I laughed so hard that my cheeks were hurting. The more I laughed, the angrier she got.

"You told me to shake the mouse and I SHOOK it! I just did WHAT YOU TOLD ME TO!"

After I realized that I'd accidentally hurt her feelings, I said, "I'm sorry Mom, it just never occurred to me that you would interpret me THAT literally."

She told me I was a lousy teacher and she'd figure the thing out herself. Well, at least I helped her get over her fear of breaking something and motivated her to experiment a little.

About a week later, I found a home made greeting card with a mouse on the front making a funny face and sticking its tongue out taped to my door. Underneath the mouse were the words, "Shake This!" When I opened up the card, it read: "Thanks for the computer lessons. Love, Mom."

I guess she was a quicker learner than I'd given her credit for.