Average in LA

My parents, especially my mother, have always referred to the  internet as evil. My mom is convinced that it’s just full of porn, child molesters and other filth and while she’s not entirely wrong, all of my past attempts to convince her that my internet experience did not involve those things has only ended in a lecture about their collective evils. To my absolute shock, when I visited them for Christmas last year, I found a shiny black Dell desktop hooked up to a modem! Their stance had suddenly changed as everyone they knew had been asking for their emails and telling them to “just Google it”, which had bewildered my mom. Somehow, my Dad had convinced her that it was time to do the unthinkable and get internet access.

Since having it installed, each of my parents has taken turns temporarily boycotting their own use of the computer for a variety of reasons that all somehow have boiled down to fear that the other one will think they’re looking for porn. Frankly it’s a wonder the below conversation has taken this long to happen.

“Well, your father and I saw internet porn yesterday.” And with that sentence, my Mom has made me give up my will to live.

“Oh! Mom! No!”

“Oh, Shanna, just listen for a minute. We went to Papa Murphy’s for pizza, you know now that Rocky’s closed down it’s the only decent pizza around here. I’m not crazy about it, but it’s okay I guess, and well, anyway, when we got our pizza, there was this coupon that said if we filled out a survey on the internet, we could get 25% off our next order, so we went to the website and it was porn Shanna! Filthy, dirty porn!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure! I mean we didn’t actually see any of it! We didn’t look at it, but that’s what came up when we put that web page in. Porn! I’m about ready to call Papa Murphy’s and tell them, do you know your survey is porn!?”

“That doesn’t even make sense Mom, what’s the website, I’m going to try it.”

“You’re just going to get porn!”

“I’ll take my chances, what is it?”

“www then the dot, and I put in the www and the dot, just like it says, then p-a-p-a-s-u-r-v-e-y then another dot then com.”

“It’s just the one s then, are you sure?”

“Yes! I am sure! Your father typed it and I thought he was doing it on purpose, so I typed it and sure enough it’s porn!”

“Mom, I just typed it in and it goes to the Papa Murphy’s survey page. Are you sure you’re putting in the right address?”

“What?!? What?!? How are you getting that? Why is it coming up porn when I typed it in?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s somehow reverting to an old site.”

“But, we don’t look at porn! I have never! Never! Ever looked at porn Shanna!”

“Oh my gosh, Mom. I believe you. I don’t know why your internet is doing this.”

“Well, you would not believe the stuff that comes up. Fat women porn, Asian porn, gay porn, midget porn, midget porn Shanna! They’ve got everything you could think of.”

“I’m sure I could not think of these things Mom.”

“Do you wanna hear more?”

“No. Do you want me to just take this survey for you?”

“This kind even has the f word in it! And I’m not even going to repeat what this porn is called. Oh, and kiddy porn, oh my gosh, they’ve got kiddy porn. And animals! Shanna, they’ve got pages on people with animals! Horrible. Oh my gosh! I’ve never heard of such filth!”

“Please don’t read anymore Mom! Just close the page. I don’t know why that’s coming up.”

“AaaaaaaaaahhhoooohnoIjustclickedooooohaaaaooooaaaahhhhnononoohnono! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH NO NO NO NO NO! AAaAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! AAAAHHHH! SHAAAAANNNNNA!!!!” It’s the kind of sound that you make when you’re in so much pain you can’t even make out the words to call for help. I’m in a panic.

“Mom! Mom! What happened? Are you okay? Can you hear me? Mom!!!?”

“Mom! Mom! Are you okay! What’s happened! Mom, please tell me you’re okay!” The sounds just escalate and bleed together with the muffled words into a feral cry of pain and somehow I just know that my mother has cut her finger off. All I can think is that she must have been peeling apples in front of the computer, her hand has slipped and she has cut off a finger.

I’m trying to decide how to keep her on the line and call 911 when I hear her whimper.

“I just clicked on it! Oh, no! Shanna! I clicked on one.”

“What? What did you click on?”

“One of them porn sites! And it was right there! It was all right there! Oh, I don’t know what to do.” She sounds like she’s about to hyperventilate and she’s on the verge of crying.

“Close it before you get a million pop ups!”

“Oh no! Oh no! I can’t believe it! It was the filthiest thing I’ve ever seen! Oh no! I can’t get it out of my head! I’m gonna be sick! I’m gonna throw up! It’s seared on my brain! It’s seared into my eyeballs! What am I going to do? Should I tell your father?  I can’t tell him!”

“Oh just tell him Mom, it’s not big deal. It was an accident. He won’t care. Better to tell him than have him see all of the pop ups and not know why.”

“He’s not going to believe me! He’ll think I did it on purpose, but it was an accident?”

In the background I hear my dad gruffly ask “What was an accident?”

“Daddy, I clicked on one by accident! I didn’t mean to, but this dang thing is so sensitive that I clicked on it!” I can’t hear what he says back to her, but she screeches at him “It was not on purpose! I was not trying to see nothin! It was horrible!” Then she whispers “He doesn’t believe me, he thinks I wanted to look.”

“He’s just giving you a hard time because he likes to upset you Mom. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, this is so awful! I just feel sick! I’m gonna throw up! I’m gonna jump off a bridge! I’m sick!”

“Stop it! You’re going to be fine. Maybe go take a shower so you feel better.’

“But the filth is in my miiiind!” I can’t wash it away. Oh, what do I do? I’VE SEEN PORN!”

“We need to clear your internet history and cookies, okay?”

“What, what are cookies? Is this going to erase everything? Is this going to make me reset my passwords?”

“No, it’s very simple.” I walk my Mom through what is suddenly the very complicated process of erasing her history of porn visits on her computer and with every step she just responds with a little whine and says “I can still see it.” I have to walk her through the whole thing twice as she swears that it’s not erasing, and when we’re finally done she complains that the computer is now “barely running.”

“Now it’s slow. It’s never been like this before Shanna. It’s slow because of the porn. What have I done? What have I done? All over this stupid coupon.”

“It’s going to be fine.”

“No, it’s not. I can still see it. Do you want to know what it was? Do you want to know?” I ponder this for a second. On one hand, I kind of do want to know as I have a feeling that anything she clicked on must have been a main page, which I can only guess is the tamest part of the site, and then on the other hand, there are some things I don’t think  I could stomach coming out of my mother’s mouth.

“No,” I decide. “No, I don’t want to know.”

“Well, I had to know! I’d tell you, but I don’t think I can repeat it.”

“Works for me.”

“Well, I’m going to let you go.”

“Are you okay? Really Mom, everything is going to be fine.”

“No, I am not okay! I’m gonna go puke.”

“Okay, go and puke.”

“I am! Sick to my stomach. People are sick!”

“Alright, I love you. Bye.”

“I love you too. Now let me go puke.”

While in the middle of writing this, my computer suddenly started locking up and I was unable to type anything. The cursor went crazy and started selecting full paragraphs and deleting them. My Mom would say it serves me right for making fun of her and then she would ask if I’ve been looking at porn.