Holiday spirit remembered when helping parents with annual
Christmas letter
My parents, bless them, are not entirely computer-literate. They
do pretty well for people of their age, which is mid-70s, but there
are certain things that just defeat them.
Typing their annual Christmas letter, for instance.
Holiday spirit remembered when helping parents with annual Christmas letter
My parents, bless them, are not entirely computer-literate. They do pretty well for people of their age, which is mid-70s, but there are certain things that just defeat them.
Typing their annual Christmas letter, for instance.
For I-don’t-know-how-many years now, they’ve been delivering a handwritten version of the letter to me so I can type it on the computer and add little fillips, like candy canes or ornaments or elves, and some red and green lettering here and there.
This year, my dad also wanted a star. So I had to find a clip art star and insert it into the proper place.
I print it out for them, they go to Kinko’s to get 500 copies made to send to their closest friends, and everybody’s happy. At least for this holiday season.
This year was no exception. They showed up with the new letter last week, and just in case I’d forgotten how to do it, a copy of last year’s letter.
My parents are extremely competent in just about every way, but they don’t do Microsoft Word.
I’ve offered to teach them – not once, not twice, but numerous times – and they always find excuses not to do it.
So over this past weekend, I sat down and got their Christmas letter done. It’s not a long project. It’s a one-page letter, which takes me all of a few minutes to type on my laptop, and then I hunt around for appropriate clip art with which to embellish it. Thanks to Google Images, this is very quick and easy.
I e-mailed them the finished product – they do know how to open attachments, thank goodness – and thought, Well, that’s that.
Famous last words.
I got a phone call.
“It’s not working,” my dad said.
Seems that whenever they tried to print it out, it came out on not one page, but two. Two would not do. It had to all be on the same page.
I returned to the document and took some of the spaces out. There, I thought, that’ll do it.
The phone rang.
“It’s still too long,” said my dad.
We went back and forth like this for a few more times. I was puzzled. My version showed me that it was all on the same page — in fact, it was only taking up about three-quarters of the page.
I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t coming out the same way for them.
The problem was such that on Sunday, they felt compelled to pay me another visit, bringing the offending letter with them, as well as a large poinsettia.
Then I could see what the problem was.
They didn’t have the same fonts I did, and the font that their computer had substituted was much, much larger.
I showed them what was going on, and they were perplexed.
“Now why did it go and do that?” said my mother, contemplating the mysteries of the personal computer.
But they decided my font was fine, after all, and it would do just fine. I printed it out for them and they left, happily.
I don’t exchange presents with my parents anymore at Christmas. They have everything they could ever possibly want, and gifts became superfluous a few years back.
But I can wrestle the computer for them, and I can make their Christmas letter look nice. And they seem to think that’s the best present ever.
