My parents are funny people. Try as I might, I can’t get them off of dialup AOL. They each have their own screenname, and they also have one they share. The shared one is on my AIM buddy list, and generally I ignore them being there, because they’re not big IMers. Following is a conversation I just had with my dad.
judy: is this mom or dad?
ParentName: dad
judy: hi dad
ParentName: Hi kid, what do you want?
judy: nothing, just saying hi
ParentName: OK talk to you later. Signing off instant message
Sometimes my mom will talk to me on IM, and today I was hoping it was my mom because I saw something at Target I thought my dad might like for Christmas and I wanted to ask her about it. My dad though, won’t talk on IM. It unnerves him when the window pops up, and he’s not quite sure what to do with it. They have an iMac that they got a few years ago, but up until then, my dad’s computer needs were served by an Atari word processor (a keyboard and a 5″ floppy drive) and a dot matrix printer. Like, from the time I was in fifth grade (’86) til about 2001. It freaks him out a little that I can make a window pop up on his screen, and he doesn’t like it. I think it’s kinda cute that my dad, who stayed up with me when I was sick and protected me from bullies, is afraid of the IM.