My Mom is…a little bit internet challenged. Like, she called me once and asked me how to “do” Amazon.com. No, seriously. I’m not trying to be funny. That happened.
To be clear, I’m not mocking my Mom. I mean, I am, but I also totally admire her in lots of ways. She’s my creative soul sister, she inspires me to be the best me I can be, and she is an A+ Grandma, but MAN is she dense about technology. {You can probably tell by the way I’m sugar coating this that my Mom reads my blog. Which is kind of a big deal considering I’m pretty much shocked that she even knows what a blog is…love you mom…}
So with that in mind, the following is an email exchange between my mother (readers, meet Margie, affectionately known as The Marge, and WOW is she going to be pissed that I called her that on the internet) and I which took place this morning:
{names redacted both for obvious reasons and also because I love saying “redacted”}
On Aug 16, 2010, at 10:55 AM, Mamasoy[redacted]@[redacted].com wrote:
Dear Morgan and Scott,
Please make a note that the 2nd night of Rosh Hashonah will be held at [redacted] and [redacted] [redacted]‘s. It is: Thursday, September 9th. I will follow up with the time.
xoxo
Mom
Okay, so usually the problem is much worse than this. This is actually a pretty casual email for her, but you see what I’m talking about, right? Suuuuuuper formal. Plus, she already told me this on the phone this morning, and was emailing me because I couldn’t write the date down when she called. [Because I was too busy to find a pen, okay?] I try to be a good daughter and help my Mom improve herself at every turn (because that’s what Mothers and Daughters are for, right?) so I decided to try to enlighten her as to the error of her overly-formal emailing ways once and for all.
In a message dated 8/16/2010 11:31:09 A.M. morgan@the818.com writes:
Dear Mom,
Thanks for letting us know. We will plan to attend, and are waiting with baited breath for the time.
Also: e-mail is a casual means of communication, and therefore you are not required to use such formal salutations when composing. I realize that you were raised on politeness and letter-writing, but we are living in a digital world, and I know you can be a digital girl. So give it a try. When you respond to this, just reply as if we were having a regular conversation. Like, for example, an appropriate response to this email would be:
Stop being such a smartass. I raised you better than that. xoxo -Mom
See? Was that so hard?
Love you!
-m-
Helpful, right? I know. I am an excellent daughter. But I don’t think she got it:
On Aug 16, 2010, at 11:33 AM, mamasoy[redacted]@[redacted].com wrote:
Dear Morgan,
Love you too!!
You little snot.
Mom
* * *
…and speaking of Momversation[s]…nope, it’s not a coincidence that this post shares a name with one of my favorite web series. I had a chance to catch up with Momversation Managing Producer Jennifer Brandt at BlogHer, and by “catch up” I mean “sweat-so-profusely-they-had-to-slather-me-with-pancake-to-control-the-epic-shine,” with a healthy side of “flail-around-wildly-while-attempting-to-articulate-myself-not-on-paper.” I swear I’m not this awkward in person. There’s a reason I’ve never vlogged. And yeah…I’m waaaaay too self conscious to post it here {and then there’s Jennifer who is all beautiful and collected and sitting right there for you to compare me to} so if you want to see it, you’ll have to head on over to Momversation to check it out.
And now I will go die in a corner.
