Laughing with a Computer

 

 It must be in the 2000s. My mother asked me to teach her how to use a computer.

 In the 1990s, personal computers rapidly spread. In the 2000s, some people who could not use computers felt inconvenienced. My mother was one of them. So she asked me to teach her how to use one.

 Frankly speaking, she was a bad student. Studying a new thing may be difficult for an old person. It is possible to think that my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease already started at that time. She had the diagnosis in 2007.

 I taught her the same thing many times, but she never memorized it. Every time I start the lecture, I needed to explain from the beginning. I could not see her progress. I believed she would never master blind touch.

 At that time, An American company started to sell Japanese voice input software in Japan, which was earlier than Japanese companies. Nowadays, most smartphones have voice input systems. But at that time, it was an epoch-making product. It cost $800. I was tired of my mother’s lack of progress. I decided to buy this software. If she could use it, there was no need to do blind touch.

 The first day of using the software, I did the initial setting. I let my mother wear an earphone with a mic. I let her read her speech draft. Our computer started to input the speech. It worked!

 But the software made a stupid mishearing. It was almost a joke. My mother looked and laughed, “Ha, ha, ha.”

The software listened to her voice and inputted “ha, ha, ha.” She watched the screen and laughed again, “Ha, ha, ha.” Again, the computer entered “ha, ha, ha.” That was an endless hell.

 We gave up using this software. It was too complicated and not of high quality.

 The $800 software gave us laughter, and it was never used. My mother quit studying the computer. If she needed one, I used the computer instead of her.

 If we had the money, with $800 we could go on a short trip and have a delicious meal.

 

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Picture by phonlamaiphoto