I’ve been giving my parents lessons on how to use a computer for the past five years or so. You’d think we’d have covered a lot of ground over that time but we haven’t. Either I’m a really crappy teacher or they’re really crappy students or it’s a really nasty, crappy combination of both, because the tutorials have pretty much been restricted to answering a single question: “How do I use the email?” I promise myself every time I won’t lose patience but that’s a pipe dream. It’s usually around the twenty-minute mark that I discover that my exhaustive description about where to find the big, bright “Send Mail” button and my carefully-worded instructions about how you have to place the little black arrow in the little white box before you start typing your letter have apparently been sucked into a gaping vortex, resulting in my mother staring vacantly at the screen and blinking rapidly in order to hold back the tears. In their defense, my parents aren’t as young as they once were. They’re also no dopes. They’re bright and active and have a genuine interest in learning how to use the computer to communicate with their friends. And yet... and yet...
I really do understand how fundamentally my parents just don’t get it. They grew up in an age that was light on the virtual, heavy on the reality. Or maybe it’s just that their need to know how to use “the email” isn’t so great that they can overcome whatever it is that’s preventing them from retaining the information. But holy crap are they not retaining the information. I mean, come on. That “Send Mail” button couldn’t be bigger or brighter, am I right? And how hard is it to remember that you have to put the goddamned little black arrow in the goddamned little... Anyway, like I said, I do understand. And I do sympathize. Sort of.
What floors me, though, is when I come across people my own age who I assume know what I know -- and trust me, what I know isn’t so hard to know -- and it turns out they don’t have a clue. At dinner the other night, I’m talking to a friend and he admits -- not sheepishly enough for my money -- that he doesn’t really know what a blog is. I expect my parents not to know. But my friend? He should know. Same holds true for another friend. We’re talking last week about the recent hubbub in the Senate -- and yes, it qualifies as a hubbub -- and she admitted she really didn’t know what a filibuster was. Once again -- and I can’t underscore this point enough -- I’m not saying I know everything. But I kind of feel like what I know isn’t that hard to know. I’ll even go out on a limb and say I feel like what I know is kind of the bare minimum of what a person needs to know in order to, say, read and understand your average daily newspaper or vote in an election or be an active and willing participant in the democratic experience.
I know the Republic doesn’t stand or fall based on whether you know how to email or whether you know what a blog is or whether you’re familiar with arcane Senate procedure, but it does make me wonder -- how do you not know some of this stuff? Seriously. I’d like to know. What's the secret? Do you have to try really hard not to let it penetrate? Because there’s probably nothing I can do about knowing that North Korea’s gone nuclear or that the country’s $1.3 trillion in debt or that the ice cap’s disappearing faster than thigh fat on a Beverly Hills housewife. But there’ll probably be an opening on the Supreme Court this summer and more “turning the corner” in Iraq and whatever high-profile celebrity train wreck CNN and Fox News will start leg-humping now that the Jackson case is wrapping up and I’d sure the hell like to not know about any of that.