Let’s hear it for teens with techie talents, remote connection software, and loads of patience for their weary and whiny parents, far far away.
A few nights ago, the audio on my laptop stopped working. Bit the dust. Dead. Nada.
D-A-M-N-A-T-I-O-N. I wanted to play my favorite DVD! Yes, a chick flick. I tried control panel, assorted configurations, speaker switching, screaming. Nothing worked. As the night wore on (and I swore on), my frustration was soaring into the red zone. So I finally called Techno-Teen, at college.
Raise ’em right!
One of the great things about helping your kids is that they may (if you’re very fortunate) reciprocate. If they can. It was late, College Boy had heaps of homework, and Moping Mother interrupted his evening. But he set everything aside, and within minutes was remotely manipulating my computer to diagnose the problem.
The whole time, he was talking me through each step, calmly. Simply. So I might learn a little something, and because he knows how much this sort of thing drives me nuts. As usual, his competence gave me the confidence to relax, knowing he’d figure it out and I’d be watching video clips, listening to French news, and playing DVDs again lickety split.
I also heard his scratchy and tired voice, his cough, and I was doing my mom thing – quizzing him on consumption of orange juice and chicken soup. He ignored those particular remarks, but I heard his roommates laughing in the background.
Lessons
At the end of an hour, my audio drivers were reinstalled, we said goodnight, and I thanked my lucky stars for a kick ass teen-techno-rescue, compliments of my son.
Keep in mind: if you have a techie problem and you can’t solve it, your teenager likely can.
My other lesson? Not only am I here if my son needs me, but if I need him, he’s a speed dial away. And he always takes my calls.
Give yourself a pat on the back for having raised a great kid. He sounds like good people.
That post made me smile. What a great kid you have. Hope he feels better soon!
He is brilliant…and so are you, xv.
Awesome! My teens would just say “buy a new one”. 🙂 And I would not buy a new one – for years, just to spite them.
Windows?? Yuck, (says the mac user) the remote control trick is great!
Good for you both!!!
Jeez, I hope my kids help me out someday. I feel like I’m getting further behind with technology every day. I used to be a computer technician (had A+ certification and everything) but that was 12 years ago. Now I can’t even figure out how to uninstall a program on my computer. Duh. Oh, well. I need to get my kids on the computer more often.
That’s great! Sounds like a good young man you raised. 🙂
I’m the one who helps my kids out… sigh. I remote in when they have problems. hopefully someday it will pay off in dividends, and they will want to help me. 🙂
Well obviously you did something right! Wanna come over a take a turn w/ my little Hellion?
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Hope to see you around more.
I happen to still be reveling in the fact that I still know more than my teen -something I’m sure will be out-dated in the near future. But, when I fixed his download problem for World of Warcraft, the feeling of being a hero, just for a moment, was inspiring. Maybe I’ll never let him beat me there….hmmm, competitive much?