The Mother Of All PEBCAKs

(I love my mother and she’s a good parent, but everyone has their flaws. Hers is an inability to ever admit that she’s wrong about something. She’s an intelligent and highly-educated person, and also very stubborn, and it is impossible to get her to believe that she could be mistaken about something. It leads to situations like this a lot:)

Mom: “D*** it, the Internet is out again!”

Me: “Oh, it is? Let me unplug and replug the wireless router–“

Mom: “Don’t do that; it won’t help. It’s the terrible company we had to switch to. I knew their service was going to be awful. This happens several times a week.”

Me: “Well, let me do it just in case. I’ve done it before when it stops working, and lots of times it will reconnect a few minutes after.”

Mom: “I said no! That’s not the problem.”

Me: “Can I just try? It can’t make it worse.”

Mom: “[My Name], look.” *points at her screen and gives me an exasperated look* “See how this icon is lit up, and this one isn’t? This means the router is fine; it’s the wireless service. Messing with the router won’t help.”

Me: “I swear it’s worked for me before. Can’t I just—”

Mom: “Please just don’t touch it! For Pete’s sake, I built a computer from scratch once! Why won’t you believe I know what I’m talking about? Just leave it alone.”

(I had to wait about twenty minutes until she left the room for something, and then I unplugged the router, waited a few seconds, and plugged it back in. In about a minute, the Internet worked fine again, the same way it did nine times out of ten whenever I did this trick. My mom may have minored in Computer Sciences in the ’70s, taken a refresher course in the late ’90s, and used several different types of programs at her job, but I can recognize a basic action/reaction model. Luckily, the router’s been moved to my room, so now I can do it before she even notices anything’s wrong.)