Woody Cavenaugh

It's day two on the crystal coast, we visited the aquarium, took in the maritime museum and I paid extra careful attention to the Black Beard exhibit. (Working on my Pirattude with a little field research me hearties.)

It was a good day up until the moment mom went to war against the machine.

She, being a good little sixty-five year old is trying to claw her way into the twenty first century. Little by little I am dragging her onto the great big scary internet. Typically she wants something, she sees it online, she goes into town and buys it. She will order by phone off of the TV. If she wants to order something from the internet she waits for me to come home, than I order it for her. I know it is about to happen because she opens up her secret stash and dusts off her credit card. I swear it isn't easy entering in the roman numerals for the account numbers on the webpage.

She is also trying to deal with retirement issues, insurance, and basic banking online. No easy feat, I will freely admit that. Today she wasn't able to get into her online account, she had trouble before and I think she wanted to have trouble in front of me so I would be forced to help her. She tried, it failed, she innocently says, "I can't get in, maybe you could fix it for me?" I replied (sagely I might add), "No mother, you have to learn to do this for yourself." HA! In your face!!! (I can't tell you how many times she's done that to me growing up.)

To be completely fair she gave it a good college try. It went something like this. She tries to log in, she fails, the webpage suggest she call a phone number to get help with her online account. It also gives her an error code which she is supposed to give them. The call went something like this:
"Hello?"
"I need help with my online account."
"online account"
"I can't log in"
"I don't know."
"I can't log in"
"I can't, I don't know."
"I can't log in"
"Wait, wait, I need to write this down"
"I DON'T KNOW"
"Hello..."
"Hello..."
She then hung up the phone and preceided to throw the temper tantrium to end all tantriums. Some of you may have had the misfortune to see me throw a temper tantrium. That was nothing compared to this. Hell hath no fury like a sixty-five year old woman arguing with a computerized helpdesk. When I was a kid I thought she was speaking in tongues. I have never actually heard anyone speak in tongues before, but I had heard in church that when folks spoke in tongues, they acted crazy and you couldn't understand what they were saying. I didn't know what she was saying then, but I've got years of experience behind me now. I KNOW what hardcore cussing is, and that would have made a sailor blush and same "Ma'am". The tirade went on for what felt like a geological age, but couldnt have been more than a half hour to forty five minutes. Though the sound and the fury, it is difficult to judge time, she was so angry the clocks stopped ticking for fear of retrobution.

At any rate, eventually she regained her english speaking ability (Which 99.999% of the time is ALWAYS rated "G"). It was only at this point that I found out that she had infact been talking to a computer. Companies that use computerized voice recognition software to be their first tier helpdesk have much to learn about the ways of man. My mother has much to learn about the ways of modern technology.

I took a turn. My conversation went like this.

"WTZ-128"
"Asshole"
"Asshole"
"Asshole"
I handed the phone back to my mom. "You are being connected to a human now."
She took the phone put it up to her ear.
"Hello"
"Wait a minute"
I watched while she furiously typed a number into the keyboard of the computer. There was no text field on the screen....anywhere. She says to me, "Where's the pound sign? Quick!" I started to point to the "3" but she was interruped by a human.
"It asked me to enter my account number but I couldn't find the pound key." I went to the bathroom and closed the door. It is rare I laugh outloud in the bathroom with my pants on, but I needed to distance myself from my mother who was getting satisfaction with a human on the level two helpdesk.

After a few minutes I could control my laughter and she got off of the phone. She was still agitated, but as she talked to a real person, and got real help she was spiraling back down to preschool teacher levels of calm. She trembled as she spoke to the human, but her speech was calm, and her language and manors completely rated Doris Day "G". She's THAT careful with people.

It was at dinner I got around to mentioning (as casual as I could mind you), that when a phone asks you to enter an account number and the pound sign, they want you to enter it into the phone...even if you are sitting in front of your computer.

It was only then I knew she had returned to normal. She laughed with me.

The secret is that if you give the computer what it isn't expecting, and you are consistant, it will be forced to turn you over to a human.