By Sally Friedman
 He calls it “that machine.” And when he walks past, he gives it wide berth, as if approaching it would tempt fate.
My husband — my rational, bright, informed husband — is computer illiterate.
By choice!
A retired judge, he uses books to dig into whatever interests him. His newspaper reading (four a day) is impressive. So why, he reasons, bother with this upstart with its blinking cursor?
And its, well, complications?
The Internet? Sure, it’s intriguing. But his wife can take him there — and does, when he asks (which is rarely).
From what he has observed of my own alternating agony and ecstasy with computer life, he says he’d just as soon decline. He has watched me sputter when some mysterious glitch causes me to lose hours of work, or mystifies me for days. He has watched the chaos of a modem malfunction. He has witnessed my volcanic explosions with nameless, faceless, graceless tech supporters.
But still, I’m convinced that Vic, and men like him, are actually operating under an old enemy: Fear of failure.
Like many people, he likes a sense of control and mastery. He dislikes dependency. And computers are nothing if not controlling. We come to them as supplicant, and we pay the price for being human — and flawed.
For all his professional life, he solved problems without high-tech assistance. Books — and human interaction — were his context, and it worked well.
When the courthouse installed computers in his chambers, he looked at the intruder with unveiled contempt because it took up room on his desk. He never bothered to learn where the power switch was because, true to his resolve, he never planned to turn it on.
And he didn’t.
Luckily, a devoted secretary and equally devoted law clerks provided him with print-outs when necessary. The office functioned as always, with a few improvements that even Vic had to admit made life easier.
When he retired, I thought my ace in the hole would be the lure of e-mail. Now, he could hook up with his college and law school buddies, almost all regular computer users who left it to me to pass on their messages.
But the ultimate lure (or so I thought) was this: three daughters who communicate almost exclusively via e-mails and cell phone. Except with their father. Each has valiantly tried to convince dear old dad that it was time to take the leap.
“I like to talk to you,” he responds. What daughter could argue with that?
And the seven grandchildren out there, four of them computer-savvy?
Same deal.
So my husband lives minus cyberspace — quite happily, thank you. He is prone to point out that he is calmer than I — and more at peace. I argue that I’m also connected with the whole world, have remarkable stashes of information literally at my fingertips, and can connect with friends around the world in an instant.
Victor is not buying. And lately, I’ve not been selling.
In a long marriage, one of the lessons learned is that trying to change a mate is about as likely as choosing celery over chocolate.
You lose!
When did “parent” become a verb?
If you’re bringing up kids today, you’re “parenting.” We didn’t parent, or didn’t think we did - we were parents (are, actually, even though the kids we parented, or whatever we did, are now middle-aged).
Although we weren’t parenting — or at least didn’t think we were — there was no shortage of concern about what it was we were doing. Then, as now, everyone was an expert. Advice was plentiful - from our own parents and grandparents, from newspaper articles and columns, from books (Spock was a baby specialist then, not a science fiction character), even from well-meaning strangers.
A well-parented child ate what you served (sort of), didn’t have tantrums (not publicly, anyhow), got along with most of the other kids, didn’t bring complaining notes home from the teacher and didn’t talk back to grown-ups (even when it might have been justified).
Some kids (“spoiled brats” we called them) could be an embarrassment, but they were other people’s kids.
Temptation to say ‘no’
One thing that used to trouble me was the temptation to say no automatically. Sometimes, I’d say no, then have second thoughts: Why the hell not? The decision may have been reversible, but it was usually too late — I had just forbidden something for no good reason.
If challenged (and we often were), we could always fall back on that old standby: “Because I said so.”
The great humorist, Ring Lardner, said it better: “‘Shut up,’ I explained.”
It’s Mom’s fault
Each generation seems to worry more about parenting than their predecessors did. That’s because blaming parents for our problems has become entrenched in our culture. We dread the prospect that some day, our adult children will say, “It’s your fault I’m a loser.”
To some extent, true, we are responsible for how the kids turn out, but a lot of other influences were at play, too. It’s too pat an alibi for Junior.
Might Mom and Dad have done a better job? Sure, but so what? Get over it.
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