The Dell from Hell: A Mother’s Day message

As we work our way to Mother’s Day and all the roses and brunches and the gifts, here’s a message from one mom to her daughters.

I am of an age (don’t ask; I won’t tell) where I have seen the newspaper business go from hot type to cold type to no type; from an electric typewriter to a three-copy mysterious piece of paper that somehow went to a computer somewhere, to the sophisticated machinery of today.

My daughter the doctor says the six words on the phone that chill her blood are: “Becca, do you have a second?”, while I can hear her sister, the West Coast offspring, take a deep breath and with an edge to her voice sa,y “Hi mom; what’s up?”, each knowing she is in for the next 30 minutes of torture.

All because of the Dell from Hell, the computer I inherited from my 15-year-old grandson; the one that skips from your last typed-in word to a totally random paragraph somewhere else on the page. The one that the techie designers, all sado-masochists in my view, created; a monster that hides simple clear normal commands a techno-Luddite like me needs to find; the one that creates in me murderous thoughts and illogical fury.

Let me be clear. I hate the Dell from Hell. And while no family member will say this out loud, why would a teenager give up his computer? To buy a new one, of course. But also because it’s my belief he secretly knows it’s the Dell from Hell.

So to my two patient daughters I say: Thank you for dragging your mother into the current technology and for all the 30-minute previews of purgatory I impose on you.