(Continued it was too long)
My parents still use AOL.
-Kai D.
While my mother was looking over my shoulder an an AIM conversation:
Mom: "What does LMAO mean?"
Me: "It's an abbreviation"
Mom: "Let's Make An Omelette?"
-Chris F.
When Gwen Stefani's song "Hollaback Girl" came on, my dad sang what he thought were the words while tapping his fingers and bobbing his head to the beat - "I ain't no Harlem black girl."
-Christine R.
My mom bought a Nintendo DS to play Brain Age. After it sat on her desk for about a month, I asked her why she hadn't opened it yet. She said she didn't have the time to install the software.
- Jon from Toronto
My oldest brother is in the military and was just on deployment in Iraq for about a year. Using a phone at his base in Baghdad, routered through who knows what monitoring agencies, he would call home every month or so. My mother, being worried and feeling lonely that he had not called in a while, decided to hit 'call back' on the number stored on our caller ID. After some confusion on the other end of how an incoming call came in, my mom said she was trying to reach her son stationed in Iraq. The person responded, "Ma'am, you've reached the Pentagon." A day or so later my brother was scolded by his commanding officer for not keeping in better touch with his mom. Poor kid, fighting for his nation and his mother is still embarrassing him.
- Devin from Villanova
My mom asked me what MP3's look like.
-Jessica L.
My mom was trying to find a picture I had taken for her. She called me up to ask where it was. I told her to navigate to her desktop and look for it there. She said, "But I only have this laptop."
-Brendan M.
During class, we were doing student presentations using a new projector attached to a laptop on a cart. When the screen first turned on, it was partially on the wall and the ceiling. The professor just sat there and stared at it. After about two minutes of doing nothing, someone asked him if he was going to fix the projector so that it was completely on the wall. He responded with, "I thought that it would automatically adjust itself, I didn't know I had to do it manually."
- Jon from Toronto
On spam emails about penis enhancment:
Grandma: Do you ever get e-mails?
Me: Yeah....
Grandma: What I mean is, do you ever get SEXY e-mails?
- Devin from Villanova
Every time my dad wants to check his email, he goes to Google, types in
www.hotmail.com, hits search, and clicks on Hotmail. He recently told me he discovered a shortcut - he can just hit "I'm Feeling Lucky."
-Jared Codling
My grandmother once used all the pictures on a disposable camera, then threw it away. She thought the pictures would come in the mail.
-Mike M. from Mass Maritime
"My uncle asked how much it costs to delete files from his computer -- which was not online, I should add."
-Patrick Cassels
I received a message in my Facebook inbox from my mother with the subject "OMG what have I done????" and a message that said "Help!! I don't know what I'm doing! I'm just following the prompts!!!!!"
- Lauramy N.
And the most dangerous award goes to - My mom turns down the radio in the car so she can read her text messages.
-Bret S.
My mom asked me to set her up with an email address, but she has never oncelogged on. She said she thought she needed one to be able to playsolitaire on the computer.
-Kailey D.
My dad wanted to get an HD television, so my mom asked me how much it would cost to upgrade their 30-year-old tv.
-Darby D.
It took nearly an hour on the phone for me to explain to my mom how to open, save, and re-open a file in Word. The next week she called me back asking how to save a file in Excel.
-Sean from University of Alberta
My dad asked me to go with him to buy a new cell phone. While we were in the store, I was explaining to him all of the new features you can get on a phone. I said, "This has the basic stuff, like when someone calls you, their picture appears on the screen, so you can see who is calling you." Hhe responded, "What if they are in the bathtub when they call?"
-Curt
My aunt asked why her wireless router wasn't working. I went to check it out, and she had the cable modem plugged directly into the laptop and nothing but the power plugged into the wireless router. I explained to her that she needed to plug the modem into the wireless router and she responded, "So now I am going to have to carry around that stupid box everywhere I go?"
-Kyle W.
I let my mom borrow my laptop one day and when she brought it back she was angry about how the "stupid thing didn't work" and "the touch screen was unresponsive." I don't have a touch screen.
-Shannon M.
Once I was supposed to be doing a project for school, but all my friends were on AIM. Hours passed and I had done little on my project, so my father screams at the top of his lungs, "Matt - if you don't start working on your project I'll unplug your A-I-M!"
-Matt O.
My 75-year-old grandfather just bought a laptop so he could learn to use the Internet. I got an empty email from him yesterday, and the subject heading was, "Andrew what does it mean when it asks 'are you sure you want to send an empty message' when i click on the send button??? ----love grandad"
-Andrew S. from Frostburg
My parents were shopping for a new dictionary online. I told them it was free at dictionary.com. My mom said, "Free? But you must still have to pay for shipping."
-Alex J.
My father called and asked, "I know you know computers, so I wanted to ask you which is the best type of computer out of Apple, Dell, or Gateway?" I told him, "I'm not sure, it depends on what you want to do. Are you getting a new one?" He says, "Probably, I just wanted to ask you because I got an email telling me I've been chosen chosen to win a free computer out of those choices, and I also got a $200 gas card."
-Darby D.
I received the following text message from my mom: "ill call them when i get off work lATER TODAY AND HOW DO I KEEP GETTING THESE GOD DAMN CAPITOL LETTERS ON!!!" .
-Kyle from VT
I walked into my house and my dad said he heard on the golf course about a book of faces, and that all his friends were worried that their children were in it because it is supposed to be college kids. He asked me if I had put my face in it and if it was a cult.
-Anonymous
My sweet ol' Granny Myrle recently got her first computer. After playing solitaire for a while, she called my dad and said, "I have to stop playing! I owe a lot of money!" She had the "vegas scoring" option turned on. I love you Granny!
-Gabe S.
My parents got their first new computer in eight years while I was in town over Christmas, so I set it up for them and helped them get used to Vista. I left my dad to transfer files from his old computer on floppy disks, but soon got called back in to help him. He thought he had gotten the wrong size floppy drive. I came back in and found him under the desk, trying to fit a disk into the subwoofer."
-Daniel L.
My friend's dad worked for a local cable company answering phones and helping people with their computer problems. One time an old lady called and asked if somebody could come by and shorten her cable because it was too long. He said, "oh we can do that automatically from here if I just pull on it....how is it now?" She replied, "It's much better thank you."
-Patrick R.
My mom asked me to send my sister an e-mail telling her to "check her e-mail."
-Jeff A
I've worked at an internet company for about a year. One day, a lady called and told me her computer wouldn't turn on no matter what she did. I said "Ok, can you look at the back of the computer and make sure the power cable is plugged in." She responded, "Just give me a second, I have to find a flashlight because the power is out here at my house."
-Nick P.