Karma, ahhhhh, the most misunderstood word not in the English language. Karma is a bitch...when it comes back around to bite you in the ass, but karma is "da bomb" when some great thing happens to you because you did some great thing before with no expectation of any kind of reward.
Case in point, my new blog and the fact that it took me an entire day of crying, yelling at my husband about what a failure I was and trying again and again to make myself relevant by starting a blog to no avail. I finally get it all to work. I am so happy! Then I research how to make money from it and find out about ad sense! Oh yea,ad sense! I have heard about that before, I say to myself. So, I apply.
EHHH. Negatory. Not happening, No. Nope...you get the picture. Apparently, I signed up for it when I first started this blog three years ago. Then I didn't blog enough, not knowing someone was watching, expecting "clicks" and I was DEEENIED for negligent clickatude. I did fill out the appeal form and hopefully I wasn't woefully negligent about clickage and they will reinstate me. But...I cried and cried about THAT road block.
Here is where Karma comes in...years ago when my in-laws got a computer I set up a facebook account for them. Loading pictures from all of their children's pages onto their page and connecting them with art clubs and loading them up with friends. We went up to Schenectady to visit and I spent two days teaching them about it. We go home to PA.
I get the call. Something happened on the Facebook.
In the back ground, "Tell her you broke it."
In the foreground, "I didn't break it. One of the grand kids broke it."
In the background, "Well it wasn't ME!!"
In the foreground, "Are YOU a GRANDKID???"
So, a five hour session over the phone with me signed in down here in PA and them trying to sign in in NY resulted in 26 lock outs from them pushing "enter" a thousand times. Me changing the password the same amount of times. A call to the help line to explain that no one was trying to hack their account. A reinstatement. A promise on a bible from them to me that they would NOT under any circumstances hit enter more than once. And them finally understanding how Facebook works.
My husband told me I earned my way into heaven that day!
Later, my father in law asked ME how to look up porn on the internet, ME, not his four sons...ME! But that is a whole other story. I think it's cuz he and I used to sneak cigars on the back porch...but I will never know.
So, with my ad sense woes in front of me, I asked for help. My daughter said, "Ask Ermina. she knows all about that." And so I did and offered to pay in cash or babysitting or homemade pasta. She chose the last two and will be over soon to save this old broad's non-techy ass.
But I think we all need to be a little gentle with my generation. We grew up with three channels on the TV. One phone in your house which was often a party line...you shared the number with several other families and had a special ring for your house...and yes you could listen in to other people's phone calls - my grandmother was the queen at not getting caught picking up the receiver and wrote the local gossip column for many years based on this skill.
The phone was tethered to the wall or was on a stand. There was no way to communicate with others except letters and long distance phone calls. Making this call was a big occasion in my house because my sister lived in Texas. My dad had put a phone in my bedroom illegally (you had to buy or rent your phones from the phone company; but he worked for GE and got one at the company store and installed it illegally in my room so he didn't have to pay for the extension) and I wasn't allow to pick up the phone until my mom called up the stairs, "It's saaaaaaaaaaafffffffffffe. You can pick up the phonnnnnnnnnne!" after the operator was for sure not on the line. If I accidentally picked it up before this I was sure I would have been sent to the gas chamber.
These calls lasted THREE minutes. After that your parent cut you off when the operator came on the line and said, "Your first three minutes are up. If you want to continue you will be charged..." I don't know what came after that because my father had always hung up by then.
This is how I grew up. My generation are the people who have had to learn to operate machines, computers, digital music, phones and GPSs that were on the Jetson's cartoon on Saturday mornings when we were little. We have had to learn this in just 10 short years, more or less.
Karma requires you to remember this day as you help ME, your mom, your dad, with computer skills so that when the day comes and you have to learn how to teleport to Oregon from YOUR CHILDREN... YOU too receive the same gentle education from them....
Yea, karma is a bitch sometimes. But sometimes it's a sweet bunch of young people helpin' you out.
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