Teaching them American Sign Language before they can even grasp their own bottles has been very rewarding for me. Lucas (the one on the left in the above photo) anticipates the spelling of his name and babbles in ASL with me when I go through the Alphabet Song with them.
I have never really had the patience not the temerity to teach anyone anything. Yes, I taught my own children the basics of life. Yes, I homeschooled them. I have even taught some fun skills to them. But teaching has never been my thing.
I love to learn new things, and until this morning, it's never really dawned on me that the very act of learning is a skill. When the twins were born, one of the doctors' biggest fears for them was whether or not they would quickly learn to breathe and eat at the same time. Learn to breathe while eating?
Fast forward 3 months, and I am watching my son (the twins' uncle) teaching my mother how to navigate something that, to me and him, is as simple as breathing while eating-- setting up an email account.
It's not that I'm not proficient in the basics of computer skills. I was around when the ridiculous staticky sound of dial-up internet was the norm. The last three courses I needed when pursuing my Master's Degree in Criminal Justice were all online. But the patience to teach it to someone else, particularly someone who believes that "an internet" is an infinite black hole filled with scammers, predatory data stealers, and serial killers is not a skill I have perfected. Yet.
My father firmly believes that once you plug a modem cable into a computer, the entire world can see and hear everything going on in the house. He refuses to possess more than a rudimentary flip phone, and he doesn't even know where the power button is located to turn on the ancient desktop computer my mother uses for word processing. That said, my dad has found value in YouTube videos that feature his old albums and favorite songs of ages past. Someone else has to find them for him, but he'll watch them.
As I've mentioned on a livestream or two, I met my husband on the internet. Anyone remember the all but obsolete "Myspace"? It hasn't disappeared, but the social networking aspect for us normies has been replaced by the plethora of musicians there. My husband and I met while playing an app--a game-- called "Hotties For Sale". It wasn't a dating app. It was just one of those "buy your friends" mindless games where you use fake money to buy and sell your Myspace friends' profile photos and chat with the people who are buying and selling from and to you. Remember those online classes I told you I was taking? This game was how I blew off steam between assignments.
When I told my mother about my budding romance with my husband and how it happened, she was terrified for me. The internet may as well have been The Twilight Zone to her. I can only imagine she thought there were just swirling faces and weird-looking colors like in the Willy Wonka movie with Gene Wilder as they sailed through the super crazy tunnel. Even though she now knows that real, live, sane human beings are on the internet too, it is still as foreign to her as the day she heard the first network handshake/nails on chalkboard staticky sound of dial-up just before I clicked onto the blue screen that led to, "You've got mail!"
But back to this morning. My conversation with her went something like this:
Mom: "Why did they put an 81 behind his name?"
Me: "It's just a suggested email address. You can change it to whatever you want."
Mom: "But he wasn't born in 81. Do I need to change that? How do I call them to tell them he is older than that?
Me: "If you don't like that one, see this blank space here? Type what you want his email address to be."
Mom: "Why are they asking me for a password? Do you know my password?"
Me: "You don't have one yet. They're asking you to make one up."
Mom: "So, like..." [She begins to type "1,2,3,4..."]
Me: "Not one that can get hacked. Something harder."
Mom: "But then how will I remember it?"
Me: "You have a pen and paper right there."
Mom: "If I write it down, won't somebody steal it?"
I'm not cut out for this. This is the woman who taught me how to use a spoon and fork. How to walk. How to spell my own name. And I can't muster up the patience to teach her something that seems even more simple than those things. As I'm feeling kind of low about myself and my ability to navigate my mother down the chocolate Willy Wonka stream and through the tunnel of nightmares, my 19 year old son walks in and takes the reins.
And he's full of compassion and an air of superiority as only teenagers can beautifully pull off, and he gets my mom where she wants to go online. When he's finished, he isn't even sweating!
Here I am trying to teach my mother's great-grandsons American Sign Language, and my son gives her basic computer tutorials. This circle of life thing is really working for me! Now if only I can learn patience...
