Tech Support For Mom

I’m pretty tech savvy, which leads to all kinds of “Can you fix my computer?” type questions. It goes with the territory.

Then there’s my mom.

Mom has never been a tech person. Mom has always been a practical joker. This leads to some interesting conversations where I’m never quite sure if she’s pulling my leg, totally clueless, or both. Today would be a good example.

Mom has a satellite TV setup and she wanted to watch all of the KC Chiefs’ football games this year, so she paid for the NFL package. Almost every week this season, I’ve gotten a call asking what channel the game is on. Sometimes it’s because she’s looking for it at 1:00 when the game doesn’t start until 4:00. Or the other way around. Last week the same question, but this time the game was at 8:30. She’s looking for the game on CBS, when it’s on NBC. That sort of thing.

Today I got a call because she wasn’t getting the Chiefs game, seeing a different game instead. Turns out that she was watching the local CBS feed, while the KC/San Diego game was also a “local” game, but for different markets. There was some confusion over this, where it seemed to me that she kept turning it back to the CBS affiliate or to ESPN or to the NFL Network. I kept trying to explain that there should be a whole block of channels, probably up in the higher-numbered pay-per-view and premium channels, where channel N would have Game A, channel N+1 would have Game B, Channel N+2 would have Game C, and so on. She just had to find that block of channels and pick the Chiefs game.

Still no go. She wasn’t understanding what I was describing and didn’t know how to search the listings. (DirecTV does have some sort of search function or directory channel, right?)

I was online and she wasn’t.  (There’s a good reason she wasn’t. Mom doesn’t have a computer, pad, or smartphone. I’m not even sure she has a cell phone. No email, word processing, social media, games, photos — nada! The Internet and Mom are not on speaking terms.) So I pulled up the DirecTV web page and tried to search for her. For the record, at least on an iPad, the DirecTV site sucks when it comes to trying to search for a specific program.

Fine, I had the webpage for display of the channel lineup, current show, and shows for the next two or three hours. We’ll do it the old fashioned way, I’ll just scroll through hundreds and hundreds of channel listings looking for this mysterious NFL block that I knew had to be there. (It’s in the low 700’s.)

In the process of getting there, I’m talking to myself and I’m wondering if DirecTV carries NASA-TV on one of their channels. I’m a huge fan of NASA-TV and when Time-Warner dropped it here a few years ago I did my best to be politely annoying at every opportunity, wondering when they could put it back on and why they had dropped it to begin with. I watch a LOT of NASA-TV. (Still scrolling through the channel listings.)

Mom asks what I’m talking about. I tell her that I was wondering about NASA-TV. “Never heard of it,” Mom says.

“Really? NASA?”

“Never heard of it.”

Okay, maybe I’m not enunciating or we have a bad connection. “NASA, the guys who put people on the moon? The space shuttle?” (Still scrolling through the channel listings.)

“Oh, right, I know them.”

“Okay, they have a channel you can watch that I like.”

“Oh, no,” Mom says, “I have a Samsung.”

Count backwards from ten. Slowly. “No, Mom, I’m not saying NASA makes TVs. I’m saying that they have a channel you can watch with space stuff.”

“Don’t I have DirecTV?”

Again, take a deep breath. Count backwards from ten. Slowly. In German. I’ll (foolishly) try again. (Still scanning the channel lineup.) “No, Mom, DirecTV is the service provider that you pay to get the signal that goes into your Samsung TV. You have a lot of channels on there, like CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN, ESPN, HBO, and so on, right? NASA-TV is one of those channels.”

“Never heard of them.”

Deep, deep sigh. When working tech support it’s not nice to get frustrated and start yelling at the customers. This is doubly true when the customer is your mother. Fortunately, at this point I found the channel carrying the Chiefs game (#707). Mom changed the channel, found her game, and I was able to get off the phone and take a deep breath.

The Long Suffering Wife came in to watch the game, having missed the conversation with Mom and wondering why I was looking pissed. I started relaying the details. As soon as I got to the “I have a Samsung” line, she starts cracking up. As in, she might fall out of her chair type cracking up. That gets me laughing as I realize how silly the whole conversation was. When I mention the “Don’t I have DirecTV” line, the laughter just gets worse.

An hour or so later my son calls from Germany and we’re talking about the game. I mention the conversation I had with Mom. When I get to those lines, The Long Suffering Wife again starts laughing like crazy, my son is laughing as well, and I’m off the deep end again.

Later on, when I checked with Mom to see if she was okay with me telling this story, she claims that the “I have a Samsung” line was a deliberate joke. Well, she got me good if it was. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. In my defense, it’s pretty tough to tell the difference between her being confused and her being a prankster.

Wait… Maybe she’s been doing that all along! Maybe this has all been a diabolical plot of hers, a fifty-year performance art piece to “play dumb” and see how long she can keep me falling for it! Decade after decade of her testing me and seeing if she can drive me insane! When I was a teenager I was sure that she was, but now I know it!!

Well done, Mom! Well done!

P.S. — FYI, Mom’s fine with me sharing the story. But she has no idea what a “blog” is. I wasn’t going to open another can of worms. I’ll print out a copy and snail mail it to her. WITH AN ENVELOPE AND A STAMP! (How barbaric.)

P.P.S. — For the record, the DirecTV channel lineup search works just fine on my desktop. Maybe on an iPad there’s an app you’re supposed to use instead of going to their web page.

P.P.P.S. — NASA-TV is on Channel #346 on DirecTV. HEAR THAT, MOM? CHANNEL #346!