35 Before 25: Teach Parents to Use the Internet

For Christmas 2006, I made my dad a pretty rocking computer. It's about the size of a small toaster oven, and it's capable of more than my parents will ever use it for. When building it, I decided it was time to get my parents onto the internet superhighway. Here's why

1) Unless if his NBA career skyrockets in the next 18 months, my brother will be moving away for his freshman year of college at the end of Summer 2008. This means my parents will be left at home with an overgrown three year old german shepherd, a menagerie of obnoxious birds, my mom's youngest sister and her four year old son. My mom's going to need someone to mother. As is, my brother's basically been renting a room in my parent's house for the last year or two, only appearing to microwave mini-pizzas and to ask for money to go to the movies. You'd think that they wouldn't miss him much.

I think the reality is my mom's going to lose a screw. The empty nest syndrome will hit her hard, and she may start crocheting sweaters for our dog before long. My mom will test the limits of unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes as she looks to her eldest son for consolation. My hope is to lay the foundation that EMAIL is a viable way of communicating with me. Maybe that's callous, but I just don't think my clients will respect an attorney who has to keep interrupting meetings to take calls from his mom.

2) Even as their inexplicable non-sequiturs grow, I'm convinced my parents are actually intelligent people. Anything I've taken the time to explain more than once, they've learned quickly. In this case, they do want to learn. My goals are modest. Get them to use email, google for information, and maybe set them up so they can manage their bank accounts and bills online. Sounds easy enough, just have to put the time in. They bought me my first computer long before it was financially reasonable to own a personal computer. It's the least I can do to repay them.

Upper Class(men) Politics

I wanted to take a moment to congratulate my brother on his successful vice-presidential campaign. It's probably best that he didn't take my advice and divide the freshman vote with wedge issues like stem cell research or gay marriage. Focus on the positives, on what got you there. You brought a camel to a school dance. That's what counts in the minds of voters.

I'm sure as he was giving his victory speech, he was thinking to himself that it was this picture that mobilized the grassroots support that put him in office.



Oh, and the other guy won, too. It was a 142-142 tie. Should the school president be unable to perform his duties, be it due to terrorist threats or because he got early outs to go to his soccer game, who will sit in his place? We'll be following this situation closely.