It's Time To Be Humble and Accept Your Role as the Family's Tech Support

What goes around, comes around. JL

Thomas Ricker comments in The Verge:

They are your parents, so try to help out. Not everyone is as steeped in technology and mysticism as you. And who knows, maybe if you’re nice you’ll wake up to clean laundry.

It’s Thanksgiving week in the US. A ritualistic pilgrimage to the place of thy birth for many a stray child. A four-day holiday where thanks is given, turkey is eaten, and relatives offend with anecdotes verging on mild to Mel-Gibson racism. It’s also the time of year when many of us don a tech support hat in the service of an elder who found a Black Friday deal too awesome to give away.

While it’s tempting to cast aspersions at the ineptitude of a parent who doesn’t know the difference between USB-C and HDMI-CEC, just remember this: your parents taught you how to use spoons and other life-sustaining technologies when you were just a dumb baby. And after this post received 591,000 Facebook likes and 1.7 million shares, you’ve probably heard your parents say the same:

Look, I don’t know anything about FB/Sue Fitzmaurice, Author. But I’ve seen The Matrix a few times which makes me something of an expert on spoons:
Truth is, the spoon doesn’t exist. Likewise, Buddhism teaches us that the self doesn’t exist. So, if there is no spoon and our idea of self is so malleable that it’s pointless to try and identify it, then mom and dad are just flat wrong and you owe them nothing this holiday season.
Still, they are your parents, so try to help out. Not everyone is as steeped in technology and mysticism as you. And who knows, maybe if you’re nice you’ll wake up to clean laundry.