Yesterday, my brother had PRK – an eye surgery similar to Lasik. He said that they sanded off some of his eyeball, possibly cut it with a scalpel or jostled it with a coke-spoon, (from that close he just couldn’t tell) and then laser-ed it for a couple of minutes before drenching his eye in cold saline and putting in a ‘wear for a week’ contact lense.
Viola – new eyes.
I suspect that if I ever rear children that they will look back on PRK and Lasik and be amazed at how barbaric those procedures were.
When my brother described this procedure to us (my mother and I), I think he dramatized his post-surgical situation a little, or we read too much into it. Or one or another of us did the absolute worst thing possible and got on the internet and looked up PRK sites.
Because really, is there anything worse than looking up a medical condition on the internet. Take a trip down to Goggle.com and type in rash or infection in the images section. Worse yet, type in a specific medical condition then ‘complications’.
Possibly fearing that my brother would never see her face again, my mom flew out for a visit. She said she would take care of him in his post-surgical days in which he would supposedly have the sightline of Mr. Magoo or a naked mole rat.
Five hours post surgery and it seems that the worst thing he’ll face in his recovery is itchy eyes and some light sensitivity.
So, at a loss for what to do with ourselves, I let my blood sugar crash and passed out on the couch for a half-hour while my mom studied. See, my mom uses the internet and not like I use the internet. I use the internet to write hypocritical blogs and generally turn my brain to toxic waste. My mother goes to college.
I am so proud of my mom. She is probably the strongest person I know, and she is my hero. I have watched her stand-up against angry and powerful men twice her size and talk them down until they were nothing but sheepish boys in front of her. She showed me that taking time with people, even just a little on a day to day basis will go much, much farther than being a one-time hero. She taught me what hard work means and that a big part of working hard is showing up. She handled me as a teenager when my hair was different primary colors. She handled me in the years that I decided my face was a pin cushion. She handled my transition and the recklessness and bullheadedness that came with it. And she handled it with grace and patience…….most of the time.
And then, when both of her kids were finally out of the house, at an undisclosed and youthful age, she called me up one day and said, “I’m going to college, and I’m going to get my degree!”
This is what I know: If I worked the long days that she works at an accounting related job, the last thing I would ever be able to do is go home and study anything related to accounting….by myself…without the structure of attending a class or the motivation of a peer group. She writes amazing essays, reads all the time and makes really good grades.
My mom disproves the idea that the internet is only for shopping and porn.
She also disproves the idea that internet dating doesn’t work.
Ten years ago, when we were all mostly still cruising around in Ameerka Online chat rooms, I went on a trip. The trip is not really relevant to the story except to say that AOL had a limit of 500 email messages, and I was on a bunch of mailing lists, and that there would be massive chaos if someone didn’t occasionally sign in to my AOL account and delete some of the email. So I asked my mom, “Mom, will you occasionally go in and delete some of my email?”
A month later, my mom said, “So…I’m taking a trip to Nebraska.”
My mom had never been farther north than Virginia at that point. Nebraska? Who finally decides they’re going to bust out and finally do some traveling…first stop – Nebraska!?!?
If I was using the internet, I might Goggle the general stats on just how much tourism happens in Nebraska. Something tells me it’s not much.
I asked, “Why Nebraska?”
She replied, “I’m going to a gambling boat.”
More puzzled, I asked, “You gamble?”
I think she was a little thrown that her sixteen year old was interested and asking questions about her life. That didn’t usually happen.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve met someone.”
In a Romance Chat Room…on AOL.
For all my mother’s amazingness, I will say that she can, on rare occasion, be just a tad over protective. When we first got the internet, she did some reading and very patiently, she warned me that chat rooms were full of the following:
Child molesters.
Ax murderers
Godless heathens
I remember that I gave her a look, and she put up her hands, shook her head and said, “I know…I know…but he’s a Weather Man.”
So, she flew to Nebraska.
And then he flew to Georgia.
And she wrote him a long email.
And they talked on the phone for hours.
For years…
Until she almost moved to Minnesota, and he…moved to Georgia because Georgia is better.
My mom and my step-dad have been married for seven years now, and he’s an amazing guy. I should tell you that he wasn’t a weather man at the time they met. He’d moved up and was a station manager or broadcast director…something really cool. Not that it matters. I was in college and out of the house by the time they married, and without needing to be, he’s been more of a father than my own – has taken more time to show me things, argue with me and just hang out. He has handled the stubbornness and calamity that is my family with patience and moxie. Apparently, my mom was wrong. There was one lone good guy, one solo civilian out there in the chat rooms amongst the ax murderers.
And so, when I finally woke up on my brother’s couch, spittle dried and crusty on my chin, I found the two of them (my mom and brother) on FaceSpace. My brother helping to navigate her through the labyrinth of news feeds and friend’s pages and links and tagging and all that crap. They put her picture up and requested people be her friend.
This has me worried a little. My mother found her husband in a chat room. She is getting a college education on the internet. While my brother dumps copious amounts of Visine into his eyes, while I wistfully dream of Ira Glass giggling at my blog posts, I'm fairly convinced that my mother is on the verge of doing something really big again....and she's going to do it on FaceSpace.
antiochlogan@yahoo.com
