When Your Parents Discover Your Blog
This past Monday, my parents discovered my blog. My Mom and Dad live on a farm in Idaho (more about my growing up on a farm in Idaho in another post), and their Internet connection speed is a crummy 24.4 kbps (that’s what happens when you surf over phone lines that were installed in the early-1920s). Anyway, when they jumped online to read some of my posts, it must have been out of either GREAT curiosity–or a lot of love–because their Internet is paralyzing slow. I mean, we’re talking, ‘the Google home page takes about a minute to load’ type of slow.
Nevertheless, Mom (or Dad, not sure which) typed “JeremyHanks.com” into the address bar, and a few minutes later they landed on this site, and a few minutes after that they chose to leave the following comments:
“Where did he learn to write like this? (Dad) Gee, he ought to write a book (Dad)” — this comment was left on my Leading By Getting Out of the Way post
“This is so great….I sure have a smart son!!” — this comment was left on my Adventure Buddies post
Later that day, I saw from my Caller ID that my Mom had tried to call, and when I called her back and said, “Hey, what’s up?, she said that she had called to find my blog address but had found it anyway, and oh by the way, “…did you see the comments we left for you?
Now, I want you to imagine for moment what it’s like being on black ice with one foot about to slip out from underneath you. My first thought was, Oh No. But I refrained and politely asked, “What comments? How did you send them? She replied with something like, “On the site; you know, where it says ‘comments’. We left two of them.”
So I proceeded to explain to my Mom how blogs work, and how those comments get posted for anyone to read. She was very embarrassed, to say the least, and said, “You HAVE to take them down. I don’t want anyone to know.”
I’ll be honest, my first thoughts were along those very same lines… I probably should take them down to save her and me any embarrassment; but then I realized that the beauty of blogging is the authenticity that comes from conversations between the blogger and the reader; so no, they would stay. Besides, I have an RSS feed for the comments, and they were already out there for everyone who subscribes to my feed, so even if I wanted to, it’d be impossible to take it back, so-to-speak. (I then ATTEMPTED to explain RSS to my Mom, and how the comments on my blog have a feed, and how a lot of people would already have them. That part of the conversation was really interesting, let me just say that.
)
All of this leads me to the point of today’s post. I think in general, parents of adults really don’t get what their kids do. Whether it’s being an entrepreneur that runs Doba (to this day, after at least 100 explanations, my Mom still doesn’t understand what Doba does, so she tells her close friends that she thinks I must be doing something illegal since we’re doing so well), or an advertising executive, chemical engineer, or a web developer, or even a child trying to explain RSS to their parent, parents try their best to get it but often times do not. Too much changes in the roughly 25 years that pass from when a child arrives and they find themselves in the beginning stages of a career. I already see that happening to me. I have no idea what all the fuss is about MySpace, and my daughter is still a good number of years away from the MySpace replacement that will enamor her.
At the end of the day though, do parents need to really get it? I contented that they do not. They’ll try to understand but since they have such deep love for us–their kids–that’s really all they need to understand.
So for the best two comments I’ve gotten on my blog so far, I wanted to let my parents know I really love them too. Guaran-damn-teed, I wouldn’t be were I am today without them. And if they read this post after a 45 minute download on a 24.4 kbps Internet connection, well, I guess that shows me and everyone else that they love me too, even though I still think the word “Blog” to them sounds like something from Star Trek.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:05 AM
Category: Personal|
1 Comment|
Trackback




