16 March 1999: TTGT On-line

Recently a reader asked me if either of my parents were on-line and if they were did they know about Speaking Confidentially and if they did what did they think of my candor.

Well. I'd call it candor, anyway. I couldn't speak for them (I don't even speak their language).

Anyway, it got me thinking that if either of them ever got on-line, familial fur would fly.

Well. Probably my father couldn't contribute much to that fracas.

So far, I haven't concerned myself because they're both as unwired as Canby.

When my father visited Denver in the fall of 1996 ago I asked him if he wanted to test-drive the web and he declined as immediately and strenuously as if I'd offered him a furn car. My father likes things to be just the way he likes them to be and has cultivated vision like in Douglas Adams's books--where you don't have to see a situation if it's Somebody Else's Problem. He knows the web serves no purpose, therefore it doesn't. I don't expect he'll ever be on line or, if he were forced to be, would wonder if I had a site or bother to read it. Searching for names is about the first thing anyone does, though, isn't it? At least, that's what I did so that's what everyone must do. (See where I get my tunnel vision? The difference is that I'm aware of it, and while it is my first instinct it's not my only one.)

I haven't written a single word about him that's untrue, or at least not overly exaggerated. He would recognize the truths, if also the one-sided nature of his portrayal. I'm sarcastic as Canby and he would recognize that too.

My mother is similarly unwired but has in the past year or so made noises about one day getting a computer. I live in fear of that day, more because of the interminable calls I expect to get from her than because of the content of my site. In 1990 my boyfriend and I were housesitting for a friend. We used her Mac and SSP closed the window of the root level of the hard drive on her desk top. When she got home and saw only the hard drive icon in the upper right but no window, she called in a panic because she thought we had deleted her files. Similarly, I fear a trying-to-be-wired BJWL.

My portrayal of my mother is even less balanced and more prone to exaggeration than that of my father. If she were hurt by what I say about her, she'd be equally hurt by my saying it publicly where Strangers might get the idea she's not the perfect wifenmother and why would I lie this way? We have a wonderful relationship, full stop.

I say it publicly because in some corner of my brain I do want her to read it, to know me, to care, and the public avenue is the only one left to me because she's made it clear she doesn't want to broach the topic. Didn't you hear her when she just said we have a wonderful relationship?

And if I teeter toward the less flattering tales and exaggerate a point, well, that's what makes a story funnier. This forum is mine own, the memories mine, the dregs of the past I cannot lay to rest mine. The glory of the web is that she could get a geocities site and dispute me top to bottomus. Not that she would employ such a first amendment democratic means, you understand.

My URL is in my signature; my name is in search engines. If she looked she could find me, but she doesn't know to look, not yet. Once she has a lime iMac, and I do think computers will burgeon into older folks' lives faster than they age away from them, then she'll want to know if I have a site. And I expect she'd have a green because we always thought green her favorite color--she always wanted the green Lifesavers. And reportedly the price of lime iMacs will soon be slashed, since it's the least popular color. (Lime is a less popular color than tangerine?)

My sister knows I have a site but is also unwired. She would read my site--I send her bits that would amuse her--but think I'm wrong to be so open and mean. My sister gets along with both our parents better than I do, because she is willing to take more shit from them than I and also she is brave enough to deliver it right back.

I expect one day BJWL will become aware of my site and of my journal and will be very hurt and not understand why I have said what I've said, not remember the circumstances, not believe in my need to vent them, not believe in my right to express them, and refuse to discuss it.

And that day might come sooner than I expect. BJWL has taken a class or two at PGN in the use of computers and the Internet. In spite of one librarian's having my email address available and my having sent it to her by snailmail, BJWL has not yet sent me email. So the day might come later than I have prepared for.

When BJWL goes online, she'll want my email address. My URL appears in the signature, which I very seldom remember to customize. (Perhaps I should get a yahoo address just for her.) She is almost 60 and not at all in wired circles, but she'll use a search engine--Dickens villages, Japanese teahouses, long-lost classmates--and there'll I be. Or earlier, if any enemy mine bothers to find and publicize me.

When a lime iMac appears in my mother's house, I shall have to either stop, censor, hide, or deal. I don't want to hide; plus it would be ineffectual. I doubt I'd want to stop writing for the web, since that's likely the only place I'll ever "publish," and I know myself too well to think I can write at any length and not have her creep in. I censor myself enough right now for my job, my husband, my friends, and for my family (believe it or not); I don't want to censor myself more. Which leaves dealing, my preferred option. I doubt she'll go for it.

I'm still looking for attention from her. All the times in high school when I'd write her an inevitably lengthy letter about whatever was going on between us, she'd ask something like, do I have to read this whole thing. Clearly, I wasn't worth her time. If she read it, would she see the whole, filled with the quirks of personality that define the lump of flesh that she conceived as an individual, as me the tigger lisa, or would she see only that her daughter, which could be anyone, has made a website and isn't she clever, or would she only remember those bits where I remark negatively on her? I'd prefer the first option, I dread the third, I expect the second, because her impervious conflict-avoidance mechanism means the second is the only possibility.

In general, I wouldn't mind her reading it, I hope. I don't talk to them of the sort of thing I write here because they don't get my jokes. I think I'm hysterical (I realize I don't write well enough to demonstrate that), my sister thinks she's the funniest woman on the planet, my mother is incapable of laughter except when induced by her brother whom she seldom sees, and my father thought Archie Bunker the epitome of humor. (This is why I prefer my sister.) I don't suppose they would read it if they found it because it would bore them, except you never know with parents. RJH wrote an annotated bibliography of Beowulf scholarship from 1980-1991 and and he said his mother would probably read every word and say "That's very nice, dear." Exactly.

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