And while I'm here I'd like to share with you just how amazingly techno-illiterate she is.
When I first met her and realized that she actually owned a flip-phone, I kind of jokingly poked fun at her for it. She actually got a little defensive and asserted her opinion that "flip-phones are the shit" and that they are the best type of phone. Despite this, her flip-phone broke not long after. So, her mom got her a new phone. And this new phone isn't exactly a smart phone but at least it's a little bit closer. I mean it has a touch screen and stuff and I think maybe a keyboard, too, so yeah.
Anywho, despite the fact that this new phone is still far from the best thing in the universe, she started exploring it a bit and was absolutely amazed at what this phone could do. I remember hearing remarks such as "What, this thing can record video?!" and similar surprise at the notion that it can record sound. I'm not sure if she was surprised it could take pictures - probably not, since I've seen her go absolutely crazy recording video and sound since she got that thing but she's less overly-enthusiastic over pictures. I remember attempting to explain to her that this was the sort of thing I was talking about when I mentioned "modern phones" back when I made fun of her flip-phone, and I'm still not sure if she's managed to wrap her head around that. I also remember just sort of flipping through the "apps" (if you can even call them that on a phone like this?) and just pointing out all the stuff that generally comes standard, like, "Yeah and it also has email, and internet..." and she got super excited like "woah what I can check my email on this?!" and then I realized that with how much she talks about how broke she and her family are I probably said something I shouldn't have so I quickly tried to fix my mistake by saying "aaah no you probably don't want to use that, that costs extra money!" but yeah it was hard to curb her enthusiasm.
And speaking of pieces of technology that broke almost immediately after she moved in: her laptop. I swear, I only ever saw her use that thing for one day (during which time I vaguely recall her needing to place a pencil under it to prop it up for some reason...) before suddenly, neither of us could get it to turn on. So she went laptop-less for a while, and spent a lot of time at the campus library, using their computers, since all our professors post a lot of stuff online with the expectation that we have access to it, so, it's kind of impossible to survive here without internet. Anywho, eventually her mom gets her a new laptop. ...She did not open it for at least a week after the fact, saying she's afraid it'll "burst into flames" since she supposedly has a bad track record with technology. Obviously there are a lot of holes in this logic, which I spent days trying to explain to her, such as the fact that there's no point in her trying to make sure it doesn't break if she's never going to use it anyway, and that the computers at the library don't explode on her, etc... but it still took me a while to convince her to open it up, and even then, she only agreed to do it with me at her side, helping her set the thing up, etc.
And then, as I'm booting it up for the first time, and trying to figure out exactly how much "set up" needs to be done (if any), I try to explain to her what I'm doing each step of the way in an attempt to increase her understanding somewhat. Since we couldn't install Office without internet access, I realized that one of the first things to do is to connect the computer to the building's wi-fi.
So, Henry asked me what "wi-fi" is. I had a hard time responding to that.
Anywho, her computer didn't want to connect to wi-fi for some reason so, since I couldn't download any of the needed software, I told her there wasn't much we could do till we got it connected and that she should "talk to the campus tech-help people" one of these days to figure it out for her. In the meantime, we might as well just turn it off. As I said this to her, her hand reached for the power button and I swear I had a mini heart attack, as I quickly grabbed her hand and told her "that's not how you turn off a computer!! >.< "
I asked her if she'd always been doing that (which might help explain why her old laptop was in such bad shape) when she explained that she only got into the habit of doing that when her old laptop kept freezing and so that was the only way she could manage to turn it off, and so using the physical power button all the time (whether frozen or not) was just easier.
I told her that, one of these days, I would teach her how to use control+alt+delete and the task manager, since that has a tendency to fix a lot of things.
And since that day (considering the fact that she has not yet sought out the techy people), that laptop is now, once again, resting snugly in its box...
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