Something I don’t tell people too often, due to my deep shame and embarrassment, is that my family is Amish.
Well, they might as well be. My mom and sister are both booksmart, are also just generally intelligent and on top of that have copious amounts of common sense – they really got the trifecta going on in the brains department. Me… well. To quote Marge Simpson’s Christmas letter: “Lisa is skipping a grade and getting a scholarship. And Bart… well, we love Bart.”
Hi, nice to meet you. For the purposes of this blog post, my name’s Bart.
My point, which I’m just now coming to, is that the women in my family are generally brainy and the men in my family (author points to self at this point) are not exactly known for being generally brainy. We (meaning me) are more known for not opening the flue before lighting a fire (I’m still sorry about that, Norma & Don) or destroying a police car with my mom’s brand-new Buick Regal (sorry, Nepean PD & mom, who’s still kind of mad about that.) The list goes on.
There is an exception to this state of affairs though- and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a little bit: What I refer to as “The Turner Family Amish Conundrum.”
My mom, who once owned and operated a successful chain of retail stores, can’t manage to locate the power button on your average pc. Mom used to have a laptop, but it once did something she wasn’t expecting when she tried surfing the internet, so mom closed the laptop and hid it in the closet. It’s still there.
I’m not even a little bit kidding.
My sister Stephanie is a very smart person. In fact, in the past it has kind of pissed me off. I dropped out of Carleton University (motto: “The K Stands For Kwality“) while Steph graduated with an hon. BA from Lakehead in Psychology. I have a funny story about Stephanie’s misadventures with computers in the past, but I want her to answer my calls in the near future.
To summarize: Mom & Sister, brainy successful people. Me, well – they love me.
I’m not a university graduate, or a highly paid professional – just your average tech wonk. I’m not a programmer but I can make anything that goes “boop” sit up and talk without reading the manual with my lips moving. I’m also married to a guy who can build you a computer and then program it to walk the dog – skills that I’ve picked up a tiny bit by osmosis.
So, when Stephanie recently encountered some issues with adware on her computer, I was able to swoop in and look all smart ‘n shit. Jeff also swooped, but I did the majority of the swooping. It was fairly in-depth techie stuff, so it’s not like Steph was just pressing the wrong buttons, and I’m actually a little concerned she’s being too down on herself for not being able to fix it herself.
Incidentally, if you’re ever down, just say “swoop”. It”ll cheer you up. Guaranteed.
Anyway, I don’t have a real point to this story. My sister had a thing, I was able to help, and everybody went home happy. Plus, while guiding Steph over the phone through what to type on her keyboard, she said, “Slow down, I’m typing one-handed,” and I totally buzzed her on it.
In the meantime, Steph says she’s gonna take a computer skills class one of these days, if she has time between churning butter and raising barns.
