Getting rid of Gran

When technology snuck up on our sleepy little town of Drongo’s Folly, named after a bullock cart driver who lost his life crossing the river during a flash flood some 100 years ago, life became much more interesting.

I remember as if it were yesterday when Dad brought home his first mobile phone.  After that, we soared ahead on a cloud of bits, bytes and text messages.  Dad soon discovered that while mobile phone calls could be expensive, emails were free.  If you discount the initial expense of the computer, software, printer and the Internet connection, he was right. 

Dad was very enthusiastic about his new toy, and said to Mum, “We’ll have to get a digital camera so that we can print our own photographs and not have to wait until the film is finished, then pay for the Kodak shop in town to develop them.”  We learned a very valuable lesson here.  If you wanted to save five or six dollars here and there, you only needed to pay a couple of thousand dollars up front. 

As Dad worked during the day, naturally this left Dave and I plenty of time to explore this new acquisition.  Kids at school came in handy for advice on how to do things, so we very quickly became proficient.

Even Mum saw the value of letting us use the computer for homework, though she disabled the spell checker so that we couldn’t cheat in our English classes.  She got the technical help line to explain how to set the spell checker to Arabic, and none of the kids knew how to get around this, so although we both got top marks for neatness of work, we still got bad marks for spelling.

Eventually we convinced Dad that we should each have a mobile phone for emergencies.  Bearing in mind the distances involved in getting to and from school, Dad agreed.  He must have been soft in the head that day, though he did take the precaution of choosing the prepaid option, to prevent us from running up enormous bills.  Naturally we took to text messaging like ducks take to water, though this did lead to a little trouble at school.

“Jack, you don’t spell thanks as THX and see you later is written as three actual words, not the letters C, U and L followed by a number 8 and an R.  And this goes for all of you,” said our English teacher.  Then he asked the class how to send a smiley face on the phone.  J

During this dizzy heyday, there was only one fly in our ointment.  Grandma.  L

She came from her home near Perth for a weekend every two or three months, and she brought her yappy poodle with her.  She was a real wowser of the old school too, and thought that little boys should be seen and not heard.  Being seen meant that she objected to Dave and I spending time in the study on the computer, and not being heard meant that she didn’t like to hear us chatting to our friends on our mobiles.

“Jack, it’s not natural for little boys to be cooped up in a small study on such a beautiful day.  Why not take Miss Pilkington for a walk?”  Miss Pilkington being the pampered pooch.

Or.  “Jack, why do you spend so much time talking to your friends on that thing?  You’ll be seeing them tomorrow.”

Or.   “In my day we didn’t have such things.  We did our schoolwork using a pen dipped into an inkwell, and if we wanted to talk to a friend, we walked three miles there and back.”

Or.  “When I was young, I spent my time reading a good book, not sitting in front of a screen playing games.”

We tried reasoning with her.

“But Gran, all the other kids do it, and you wouldn’t want us to be left out of everything would you?”

“Just because everybody does it, that doesn’t make it right.  If you were a lemming, would you hurl yourself off a cliff with the rest?”

There was no doubt about it, she had to go.

Dave and I put our heads together.  It was the local Agricultural Show that weekend, just when Gran was expected, and just like last year, she’d make us walk around looking at the stuff on show, instead of us haunting the side shows and cajoling money from Mum to get a showbag or two.  How could we get at least that weekend free from her?

“We could ring her and tell her there are bushfires around, and that it’s not safe to come,” suggested Dave, who, at 11 and a bit, had a mind so feeble it shouldn’t have  been allowed out on its own.

“Yeah, and she’d ring Dad to make sure we’re all safe.  Think again.”

“Find out her email address and pretend to be Dad, then tell her about bushfires.”

“Gran doesn’t have a computer.  She’s too old for one of those.”  A day or two passed, with more hare-brained schemes from Dave, but Gran’s arrival time was drawing perilously close before Dave came and told me he’d fixed it, that Gran wouldn’t be coming that weekend, and he’d done it all by himself.

I figured that it was time to run for the hills, but decided I’d better find out what he’d done, and demanded an explanation.

“When Dad was in the shower last night, I used his mobile phone to send a text message to Gran,” he said excitedly.  “I told her she couldn’t come next weekend as we all had the mumps and couldn’t talk, so she won’t ring Dad to talk to him.”

Something was wrong here, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I was still trying to puzzle it out, when Dad appeared for breakfast.

“Don’t forget to move your junk out of the spare room today,” he said, buttering a piece of toast.  “I’m picking your Gran up at the station after work tonight.”

“Oh but… ow!”  I quickly kicked Dave’s leg and he shut up.

“But what?” asked Dad, in a deceptively pleasant tone.  I knew that tone of old, and braced myself.

“Oh, er, nothing, Dad.”

“OK,” said Dad, dropping all pretence at civility.  “Who’s the little smartarse who tried telling your Gran we all had mumps?”

Dave’s face went bright scarlet, so Dad needed to look no further for the culprit.

“But, but…?”

“How did I know?  Easy!  First your Gran doesn’t have a mobile phone, and you can’t send a text to a home phone, so the message didn’t go out.  Second, the message stayed on my phone because you forgot to erase it.  And third, I don’t call my own mother Gran!”

Show day loomed ahead of us, a dreary round of looking at large carrots, quilts and chickens with Gran.  Somehow, I didn’t foresee any showbags that year.