My poor mom

I should start by saying that my mother is a wonderful woman. A real saint. Salt of the earth. All of that stuff.

But I reserve the right to make fun of her, and will do so now.

I can do this safely, you see, because my mother doesn't own a computer and therefore there is no chance she will ever see this post. Unless one of you snitches shows it to her or tells her about it, in which case we'll need to meet on the playground after school and settle our differences through old-fashioned, bare-knuckle fisticuffs. You're totally going down.

Anyway, my mom is not what you would call technologically savvy. The last semi-electronic appliance she learned to operate was the microwave, and that was back in the early 80s when (true story) she was afraid she would somehow incinerate the planet and therefore didn't use it for the first several weeks it was in her kitchen.

NOTE TO MOM: It's not a thermonuclear device. It's a microwave. It's deadly only to the Stouffer's frozen pizzas you stick in there.

It's not that Mom is anti-technology or anything. She just isn't interested in having a computer or a smart phone. Many of her friends and relatives are on Facebook and the like, but it's not something she particularly wants. Which is fine.

The problem is that when she does interact with modern technology and finds herself stuck – which I will say here happens on a fairly regular basis – my sister, brother or I are the ones called upon to bail her out.

And given all that Mom has done for us throughout our lives, this is in no way a problem or an inconvenience.

But you would think that once we show her how to solve a particular technological dilemma, she would write down the solution or otherwise memorize it so that it doesn't become a problem again.

And again. And again. And again.

This happens most often with her TV. It's a simple flat screen for which she has digital cable service. Time-Warner, in their infinite wisdom, has given her a remote that only a trained fighter pilot could confidently operate. It has (and I'm estimating here because I haven't actually counted) 4,718 buttons, all but three of which do things for which she has no use.

So what often happens is that Mom wants to watch TV, but she can't figure out how to turn the darn thing on. Or, if she does manage to turn it on, how to get to the channel she wants.

Or – and let me assure you, this has happened – how to make sure the TV is operating in English and not in Spanish. This is my absolute favorite Mom TV Conundrum, because listening to her try to pronounce the onscreen Spanish words as they appear makes me laugh so hard I cry.

I know I'm a terrible person. You don't have to tell me.

So every couple of weeks, I am summoned to her house to get her TV back in working order so she can watch Oprah or the Indians game or whatever (and in English). And every time I forget to write down what I did so that she can fix the problem herself next time.

In the meantime, I think I've figured out what we need to do to the remote control to help her: