Emailing England

My mother isn’t very good with computers, sure she can type up letters and play solitaire, but anything to do with the internet eludes her, especially when it comes to email…

Mum: I have to send an email to someone I know in England.
Me: Do you have her email address?
Mum: Yes, but she’s in England.
Me: So…
Mum: She’s in England.
Me: Mum, you can send and check email from wherever you are in the world; it’s not like a physical street address with a mailman who sometimes gets drunk and loses the mail.
Mum: Oh. Are you sure?
Me: Yes mum, I’m sure.
Mum: But she’s in England, how will it get there?
Me, mumbling under my breath: On the back of a magical email elf that likes to eat peas dipped in cranberry sauce and listens to Enya.
Mum, who thankfully wasn’t listening closely enough to hear my smart-assed reply: What?
Me: Nothing, just send the email to her.
Mum: Ok.

A short time later she returns with an accomplished smile on her face…

Mum: You were right, I sent it, and she replied.
Me: No kidding.
Mum: Yes, it’s amazing this email thing.
Me: That it is.

38 Comments on “Emailing England”

  1. Parents are always fun when they’re discovering the computer thing. (if it’s not already done)
    But when my father asked me if he should replace windows by linux, I answered : “Oh No !”
    ’cause I know he would phone me everytime he has a problem with it.

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  2. I think the general consensus is that any technology that is sufficiently advanced from the current technology will appear to people to be magic. So just tell her it’s magic, the technical explanation will probably just fry her brain anyhow.

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  3. I can certainly sympathise with you. Whenever my mum gets on here, I’m coming into the room every 10 minutes because she has a problem. Shes not too bad, but she often closes windows when she doesn’t want to, and freaks out when she minimises them and stuff heh.

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  4. Your mom would freak to know that people all over the world read her daughters web site. People like me, all the way from the US for crying out loud!

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  5. An herbalist, or is it a Kabbalist(?), might know something about your node. An acupuncturist might be a swell thing, too. A swell node is Nodey Knowed.

    Moms are cool. Enjoy them while they are conscious. Move the furniture around them when they are not. It’s alot of fun for not alot of money.

    Insanity on a budget. Fiscal responsibility at all costs.

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  6. My mum is amazingly quite computer literate however whenever she has an issue she’s always sayng ‘Amanda, do you know anything about *random program i’ve never herd of in my life*? Um no mum.

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  7. rofl…. thats fun .. sounds like my own mother 😉 .. when she started writing emails, i heared questions even like that .. Same thing i had was with surfing the web… She:”but this website is in australia, with german internet i can only see homepages in germany …
    parents are always like that in computer questions 😉 ..

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  8. It’s cool to see that not only have you saved the world 27 times, but you’re a West Aussie too. I’m around 3 hours South of Perth ^_^;

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  9. Haha that sounds exactly like my mom, only my mom is worse. She has asked me how to close a webpage and how many times she has to click on an icon. She gets confused because sometimes you click once and sometimes twice, depending on what you are clicking on.

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  10. My mom used to be the same way. She’s getting better though, she was able to email me from a cruise ship about a month ago without any help from anyone! Oh they grow up so fast. Now if only I can push my dad’s progress into the internet along a bit faster, then I’d be all set!

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  11. Can’t. Stop. Looking. at. the. monkey.

    I bet you get tons of hits that way, people refreshing the browser to see what the monkey says. Genius. Plus, totally cause of your content to. It rocks.

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  12. Lol. Whenever I reformat our computer, my mom goes through all her email and prints it off because she’s afraid that me erasing the hard drive will cause her email to disappear 😀

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  13. My mom is getting a bit better. She still has to call me while she’s sending and email, asking me if she’s “doing it right”.

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  14. I have been pulling my hair out with email issues such as these lately. My father is in Iraq for 3 months, my mother and sister are here at home, and my brother-in-law is in Virgina. Even though it’s 2005, each and every one of these people has trouble using email! No I am not kidding.

    To compound matters, I’m the person that everyone calls for help. I can totally relate Kitta, believe me, my mom is the same way.

    –Craig (blogspot.poletown.com)

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  15. Kayhadrin, my mother even rings me from work instead of ringing the network tech’s that are paid to keep the company’s computers up and running.

    Becca, aww crap, and I was all set to do London.

    Phil Sherry, so does mine, I think it’s a hobby they have.

    Reneé, she is adorable, when she’s excited her eyes get wide and she acts like a 5 year old on Christmas morning. So cute.

    Chris, no she wouldn’t she knows that people read my blog, whenever she says anything funny I always say “so blogging that”.

    Gregster, no I don’t think acupuncture on an enlarged lymph node is a good idea, nor would it really do anything and might cause infection.

    Marie, no matter how many time I tell my mum, she always tipple clicks on everything. It’s like she thinks clicking it a few more times will make thing load faster.

    Maddie, yep it’s all about the monkey.

    AsharEdith, I once observed my mother trying to explain blogging to other, it was hilarious, she had to get me to come over and explain it after 5 minutes of confusion.

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  16. My dad was all a flutter last night because he needed to send an e-mail to Germany… I explained – as did you – that it was fairly simple ect. It was his response that made my mind boggle:

    “I thought it went somewhere else first.”

    oh, parents.

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  17. Sweet! My mum is like that too with all sorts of things…the trouble is, once she’s worked out how to do something new – she then takes it too far and gos out of control! *Laughs*

    Text-messaging on her phone would be a prime example: she was useless with it at first, and now she’s embraced that awful ‘text-language’ gibberish…and none of it makes sense! I frequently have to phone my mum back to ask her what she actually put in her text to me…which sort of defeats the whole communication concept. Mums are so funny!

    Your post caught my attention because I’m actually IN England! 🙂

    Like

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