My mom is awesome for a number of reasons, but one of them is her ability to join us in the technological age. Yeah, we've had our ups and downs. I do remember when she first started using the computer and would fret over which password to use on which site, how to copy and paste things, etc., but she's so much more proficient with all things techie now. Sure, she doesn't know what WEP stands for in WEP key, but at least she knows she has one. That's more than your average Joe for sure.
But the computer is not why I'm writing this. It's my mom's embrace of a little piece of technology which she resisted for so long: the iPhone. The iPhone has long been a lauded invention in the Carmona household. Keith and I have used ours to do everything beyond the usual tasks: scheduling, grocery lists, gaming, logging feedings and diaper changes in the early Natalie days, placating our daughter in more recent Natalie days...you name it, I think the iPhone does it. If it gave good back or foot rubs, I might have left my husband and run off with my iPhone.
In those early days, I was kind of a zealot trying to get others to come over to my side. I'd show it off to people like it was my firstborn (well, before I had a firstborn), pointing out every application, bell, whistle, and feature. My sister was already a fan, so it wasn't too difficult to get her husband on board. We persuaded Keith's entire family to get them, too.
But try as we might to convince her, my mom was kind of dead-set against learning yet another phone. And I understood her frustration. It seemed there was a decade from about 1996-2006 when I'd get a new phone every two years and, without fail, it would have a totally different set of operating instructions than the last. Add to that the fact that you had to manually copy over all of your contacts and it became an understandably defeating process. Still, she finally relented this year and I don't think she regrets her decision.
Case in point:
We just had a ten-minute conversation about 12-year-old boys with mustaches via text message. Now that's something for the memory book.
