who says the generations don't talk to each other?

[lagilman]

Sitting in Starbucks listening to a teenaged grandson try to explain the internet to his grandmother. Since she doesn't seem all too clear on the concept of "computer," it's not going all that well.

They've moved on to the differences between internet dating, soda shops-as-meeting-places, and matchmaking relatives/arranged marriages.

(excerpted but otherwise word-for-word)

Grandson: "In this case, it's the computer system acting as the parent,as the go-between."
Grandmother: "I guess you have to be very desperate to go through that."
Grandson: "Yeah okay, you have to be desperate. Right."
Grandmother: "It's a new thing. All right. It's a new thing."

*loves both of them*

Comments

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[scottedelman.livejournal.com]

Though my father uses the internet, my mother doesn't understand it at all. She can't figure out how my dad can get his e-mail up here in West Virginia when it obviously exists down on his computer in Florida.

I've taken to explaining it in old-fashioned terms. "Remember when people used to use answering services?" I'd ask her. "They could call in for messages wherever they happened to be. Well, this is just like that. The e-mails aren't on dad's computer back home. Think of them as being with an answering service, and he can fetch them whenever he wants them."

She seems to understand, but then next visit I have to explain it all over again ...

[lagilman]

my folks are both reasonably internet-savvy, and are probably older than this woman, but she was clearly from a very different world than my folks (odds are she never worked outside her home, etc).