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Marmalade

My mother is on the internet. She rings to tell me but gets the words all wrong – for example, she says she likes to search internet with the google. I find it cute. She rings most days to ask questions like:

How do I get the camera and the computer to talk to each other?
Is it true what Peter Hitchener said on the news about viruses?
How do I do the email?

I try to help her out, but it’s frustrating assisting a person a thousand kilometres away with computer problems, over the phone. Like trying to work a marionette that’s missing most of its strings. I tell my mother to google her problems. I tell her I should be charging her seventy-five dollars an hour. I tell her that there are courses at the local library for people like her. The phone calls peter out. I ring my mother one day to find that her phone has been disconnected. An email arrives from her. I’ve decided to switch to a cable ISP, she writes. I’ll be using the email and chat to stay in touch with everyone.

A few months past that, when I boot up my computer, I find a new icon on my desktop. The only reason I notice it among the dozens of other icons – old letters, programs I never use – is that there’s a space already cleared around it, almost like the other icons are frightened to be next door. The icon is, simply, a red, capital ‘M’.

I stare at it for a while, trying to remember what function it might serve, but before I can click my mouse, it launches a program. A blonde-haired, big eyed avatar appears. It reminds me a bit of that terrible paperclip guy who is number eight on my top ten reasons Bill Gates must be brought to justice, but there’s no ‘x’ symbol to close it with. I click on the avatar and it flicks off for a moment, and then pops up on the other side of the screen. I click at it again, and the same thing happens. I have a real little game of cat and mouse with that new avatar. Finally, a speech bubble appears next to it. ‘Turn your speakers on, silly,’ the bubble reads. I sigh and do what it says, despite my better judgement.

A voice echoes from the speakers. ‘It’s me, dear.’ It sounds an awful deal like you-know-who. I blink a few times. ‘Talk into your headset,’ the voice suggests.

‘What…how do I close this program?’ I finally stutter, once I have the headset around my ears in a half-nelson. I am not about to address a program in the first person. That would…that would be crazy.

‘It’s me, dear,’ the program says in my mother’s voice. ‘You wouldn’t close your own mother down, would you?’
Of course I don’t. I let her stay on the desktop. What else can I do?

Two days later, when boot up my computer, all of my scattered icons are gone. My background picture of Michelangelo’s David has gone with them. My desktop looks like a barracks – clean, white…sterile. The little avatar blinks at me.

What did you do?, I type on the keyboard. I have decided I will not talk to a program, no matter how much it sounds like you-know-who.

‘Oh, it was such a mess in here,’ the program says. ‘I tidied things up a little. Got rid of some of the clutter.’

My clicking gets slightly frenzied. Most of the stuff is there, arranged in serried rows of folders, but…my fingers slip off the mouse and bash at the keyboard. You don’t have teh right to come in here and

‘Don’t be silly,’ it says in my mother’s voice. ‘All of the important documents are still there. But that folder – you know – hidden away under My Documents> My Photos> Temp> Stuff> Research…that’s not really research, is it?’

My fingers freeze in the metaphorical biscuit tin. It takes me some long moments to type, I should really delete that, shouldn’t I?

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ the voice says, ‘I got rid of all that nasty ‘stuff’ for you. For your own good, really.’

With that red ‘M’ on my desktop, I don’t visit some of the sites I normally log onto. But there’s others, things I’m not embarrassed about – hell, things I’m proud of – that I can’t visit anymore. When I try to, I get an:

Error (MUM) Access denied [for your own good, really, dear]

message. I try clicking a few more of these blocked favourites.
The voice returns. It sounds, if anything, slightly cross. ‘Look, there are plenty of places you can still visit. Why don’t you go and buy yourself something nice for yourself on the eBay?’

This is quite frustrating, I respond. These are news sites you’re blocking! I go to these places to find out what’s happening in the world.

‘You’ll never learn anything at all from those hysterical ninnies,’ the voice says. ‘If you want news, there’s plenty on the telly.’

Then the voice lowers, kind of like a conspiratorial tone? ‘I wouldn’t bother with that Peter Hitchener, though. He hasn’t been the same since he came out and said he was a little…well, you know…’