New technologies have always been praised and abhorred. I myself love new technologies but my mother is not one to support it. My mother isn’t a crabby old person who shakes her fist when ten year olds have smart phones. She just doesn’t feel like she can comprehend how to cope with the progress of technology. I have been trying to get her to move away from that mindset and teach her that new technologies are interesting.

A few years ago we took my mother to BestBuy to get a tablet. I shopped around with her and we eventually landed on the Android based Xoom tablet. I felt that it wasn’t the best and most reliable tablet to get but she liked it. I eventually taught her the basics of how to get online and play Candy Crush. Every once and awhile she would need help and from another room I would hear, “Paul!” I didn’t really mind because they are not the hardest problems to solve. It is usually that she can’t hear the sound and I just have to un-mute it.

Eventually the tablet started to deteriorate in speed and I felt that it was probably a good time to get a new one. This time we went to the Apple store and picked out an iPad. For some reason my mother gets the idea that the Apple products are more complicated because I like to use them and no one else in my house does besides me. So I had a challenge to rise up to, my mother let me teach her how to use the tablet. Again I taught her the basics but on the Apple based software system. The day that I taught her how to use it she really liked it.

The day after I taught her to use it, she asked me a lot of questions. So, I sat down with her again and told her how to get online and play games. And again the next day she had to ask me how to do things, like how to make the camera turn around on the screen. The day after that I went to the kitchen to get some food and my mother was sitting at the table using her old tablet instead of the iPad. In the end I did not get a tech enthusiast for a mother, but I did get a cool iPad.