International Tech Support

[lillibet]

Last night I got a frantic email from my father, who is trying to figure out
how to create mailing labels using the computer we gave him in June. So I
called him up and we spent three hours figuring out how to mail merge on his
system, which is slightly different from mine.

I feel like I have passed the final exam on my childhood. Finally, I was
able to see that when my father STARTS TALKING LIKE THIS, he really isn't
yelling at me, he's just frustrated. Irritating as it is, he just needs to
be calmed down in order to get back to productive communication. How
different my adolescence would have been if I had understood this then.

Of course, a big part of the reason why I can be so calm is that our power
relationship has changed. He has no control over my life and I don't need
anything from him--though the unconditional love and approval is nice--while
he needs my help and my attention. So it's easier to be magnanimous and to
keep slogging through dialog boxes at 2am.

He feels really old and stupid about the computer, and it's hard to
communicate to him how proud we are of him that at 78 he is learning a lot
of very complex new tricks that involve thinking about things in very
different way.

He's going to call me back after church today, once he's entered all the
addresses into the place we proved last night is the right one, so that we
can walk through the final merge process together. International technical
support--that's me.