Grandparents vs. Technology

It occurs to me that my current living situation might be good blog fodder. Lemme ‘splain:

I have an apartment in Highland Park, but it will not free up until August. Seeing as how my job started long before that, I needed a place close to this city that I love where I might live in the interim.

The obvious choice was my grandparents place up the Ohio River Boulevard. Not to be too specific with where the house is, but it is in the same neighborhood as the Lemiuexs and Sid the Kid. ;-)

So I’m living with the g-rents, and it has been awesome. My cousins live in Chile, and since they carve out a month of their summer every year to come live with these g-rents, they actually have spent much more time with them over the years… I am relishing the opportunity to live with them now. Plus, their place has central air.

So I imagine there will be a theme here for a while where I blog about the crazy stuff I run into with them. Here are a few tid bits:

A. My grandparents open the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette everyday, cut out the crossword puzzle, clip it to a clip board and when I come home it is almost completed.

It seems they are excited to have me around because I can help fill in some of the pop-cultural references to which they are not privy. The other day my grandfather asks me “do you know the company that produced Lord of the Rings?” “Newline Cinemas” I said. “Newline? With a ‘w’”—“yes. Newline.”—“well, I had the N-E-W and the I-N-E…” Then he informs me that the “L” also fills in this clue “Beatles song: I am the ____” “Walrus I said” – “yes, I had the W-A and the R-U-S.” wa_rus… wow.

B. My grandparents are not particularly tech-savvy… no computer, same TV for the past 15 years or so…

So I have been working on them. I got my grandmother to get herself an iPod to help with her tinnitus… that story is worth it’s own post to come later…

I also brought them a DVD player. Let me put this in perspective… They just got rid of their BETA deck… a medium that has not been on the consumer market for a good 25 years. So when I showed up at the house one afternoon with a DVD player for them, they were a little overwhelmed.

I said “I’m sick of you two complaining that there is nothing on, then quoting the lines in ‘Everybody Loves Raymond” 6 second before the character says them… so I brought you a DVD player… and 7 seasons of Cheers… and The West Wing…”

They told me to just replace the VCR with it… and couldn’t even remember how to turn the VCR on.

So I got it all hooked up, and we gathered around the new device, both of them looking at it as if pushing the wrong button might cause a small explosion that would require emergency services.

I gave them a walkthrough of the basic functions, and we watched the first several episodes of “Sports Night.”

The next night, I walk in from work to find them staring a screen displaying 9 images of different chapters from the “Casablanca DVD.”

“I tried to pause it when we heard you walk in, and I think I broke it,” was the response I got from my grandfather, who was sitting there with a “well… this sucks” expression on his face.