For the past year, my parents have been dying to stay home and hold it in. I don’t think it’s right, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m worried that if they keep doing this, their bodies won’t have a problem and their minds will collapse first.
Why don’t they go out? The main reason is fear – fear of repeated epidemics and fear of not being able to make an appointment or scan a code.
To control the epidemic, people had to scan health codes everywhere they went. At first they didn’t know how to do it at all, then they were forced to do it more or less, but they were very slow. When you go into a supermarket or a park, you have to stand in front of the door and press the phone for half a day, sometimes you have to let someone help you press the phone, and you are afraid that people will take the phone away.
The young people in the back of the line, whether it is the janitor or the janitor, are generally understanding of the elderly and are willing to help, and have no complaints, it is the two of them are anxious and angry, and then simply do not go out.
The two of them used to be North Dakota Wilderness Youth, after the resumption of college entrance examinations, after graduation from the university was allocated to a good job, more than a decade ago from enterprise retirement. Both of them are going strong and decent people. In my mother’s words, “I didn’t expect to live my whole life and grow old and be abandoned by society. Chilling!”
The “abandonment” she is referring to is the fact that nowadays you have to use your phone to make appointments for almost everything, and you have to use your phone to scan codes everywhere you go, and as long as you don’t know how, you can’t walk a single inch.
This is a great way to get the most out of your time with your family and friends. It’s a good thing that you can’t find any other way to get a good deal on your own. She doesn’t know how, so I’ll have to do it.
The other time my family had dinner together, the restaurant also required customers to scan their own code to order. My mom swore that it had to be her treat today, and she had to try it out for herself. She finally finished her order carefully and suddenly received a message that the order page had disappeared and she had to start over. She had to do it all over again, and when she was paying, she hit the lucky draw button that popped up on the page by mistake, and didn’t know what to do.
My mom couldn’t even spend the money she wanted to give the child and was so furious that she cursed, “Is there no way to survive! I wouldn’t eat it if I were you! Twist and turn!”
In fact, my mom’s mobile phone play quite slippery, often addicted to play mobile phone to forget that she cervical spondylosis should not be long head down.
The first time I saw her was when she was a young girl, she was a young woman, and she was a young man. On weekdays, she loves to take pictures with her mobile phone while walking around the park, and has participated in photo competitions held by the park and won prizes. Every year and a half, she will make a digital photo book of her grandson’s photos and videos using apps such as “Xiao Nian Gao”. She is also very good at online shopping, buying fruit with neighbors and groceries for her grandson online, and receives deliveries almost every day.
My dad is constantly on his phone. I receive daily news and health tips from him on a daily basis from his WeChat. He compares photos with my mom on his phone, and he also shops online so much that my mom often complains that she can’t fit all the junk in the house.
My dad has always been a “trendsetter” when it comes to technology and fashion. In the mid-1990s, we got a 386 computer. Although he said it was for office use, I remember seeing him playing cards and minesweeper on it more than anything else. Later on, as technology progressed, my family’s computer kept getting newer and newer. By the time my friends and relatives had computers, my dad often went to other people’s houses to help fix them.
My dad had accounts on QQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and he used to chat with my best friend on MSN. My dad started using WeChat before I did. He also bought me my first touchscreen smartphone in late 2012. It was my dad who led me into this world of mobile internet, but he was somehow shut out himself.
It was one thing for them to fumble with the phone on their own, it was another to operate it the way someone wanted. To register, to log in, to enter the captcha and password over and over again, they can’t keep up, they can’t remember, and they want to give up after three steps. Not to mention that many of the operations have pitfalls, and if you’re not careful, you start downloading apps from unknown sources and even gobble up your balance.
Since about five years ago, every week when I go home to see my parents, I’ve had to help my mom tinker with her phone – there’s always something I can’t find on it, there’s always a password I forget. Every time I do something with just a few clicks, my mom has to scream, “You didn’t learn either! How did you know that?” And would thank me very humbly for half a day: “Thanks to you! What if we don’t have a child?”
My mom has always been tough on me, I grew up looking up to her, and I was always a little uncomfortable when she said that, as if I had suddenly changed my perspective. I would also secretly wonder to myself, “Why can’t you get something so simple?” But I never dared to say that out loud for fear of discouraging her.
My dad is no longer the same dad who could fix computers for people. But it seems that in order to maintain his “tech-savvy” persona, my dad doesn’t open his mouth to ask questions, and he’s a man of few words. I saw that his phone was full of junk apps of unknown origin, which must have been downloaded by him unintentionally before, so I silently helped him delete them.
When I traveled abroad in late 2012, I asked my dad what I wanted to bring, and he said he wanted an iPad, as if the countries I was traveling to were cheaper than the ones sold at home. He said he wanted an iPad, as if it was cheaper in the country I was visiting than in China, but I was too busy playing with myself to buy one for him, and came back to tell him that the price difference didn’t seem that big. He said it was fine, but I felt sorry for him and finally bought him the latest iPad last year, which fulfilled my wish.
Every once in a while I’d ask my dad, “How’s the iPad? My dad all said: it’s okay, it’s fine. But I haven’t seen him use it much, he still keeps his eyes on the phone.
I’m not sure how much I’ve learned about the IOS system, but it’s quite complicated, as I have to register my account and enter my password and verification code many times just to download the app. I knew I wouldn’t be able to teach my mom, so I didn’t try to teach her, so I just did it myself. My mom was looking at me adoringly and obediently reading me the verification codes she received on her phone one by one.
Since many of the steps also required fingerprint recognition, I squeezed my mom’s index finger like a pen and pressed it over and over again on the home button of the iPad. I hadn’t held hands or shook hands with my mom in a long time, and the way her index finger squeezed in my hand, soft and crinkled, was both strange and familiar. It was a similar feeling the other day when I squeezed the index finger of the family’s two-year-old and fingered the digger in the picture book.
Parents are really old, so old that they’re like little kids: they need our hands, but they can’t teach them.
After helping my mom get it all done, I opened up the iPad I bought my dad last year and found that it was true: it was like new, no apps had been installed, and there were barely any fingerprints on the screen. He didn’t even know how to use it, and he didn’t say so, so it just sat there for a year.
I said to my dad, “iPads aren’t easy to operate, are they? You want to download something, I’ll get it for you!” He still says, “It’s okay. Quite good. No need.”
I regret that I wish I had bought it for him that time in 2012. He might have been willing and able to learn back then, when the system wasn’t so complicated to set up.
I recently interviewed and spent every day in the hospital, watching how older people who can’t make appointments online register. They are usually like headless flies scurrying from window to window asking this and that, waiting in a tense line for an hour to be dismissed at the window with the words, “No number on site, book online”. Most of them were my parents’ peers.
Some of them cursed and grumbled, while others begged and pleaded with me. Some of them were smart enough to give money to strangers and ask for help; some of them were stubborn enough to leave in despair, but they would come back the next day with the same result. But there is nothing else they can do.
Why don’t they talk to their children? Why not let your child help with the appointment?
“No kids! I’ve lived my whole life, I’ve done everything myself, and I can’t even do it myself when I’m old and old and see a doctor and get a pill?” Some old people pouted.
“The child hasn’t been home lately.” “The child is too busy, he hasn’t even had eleven days off.” “I don’t want to bother the child.” More old people will say that.
These aren’t really much trouble to the child, hiding under the covers and moving their fingers. But they just don’t open their mouths, just like my dad doesn’t open his mouth to ask me how to use the iPad.
I asked my parents: do you guys book appointments online? It turns out they can’t either, and will only call 114 to register. But the number of 114 is too small, and it will take two or three months to get a number, so if they do get sick, they can’t wait. That’s why they dare not go out, because they are too afraid of getting sick. In the past, they were able to get into the hospital, but now they can’t even get into the hospital.
I made up my mind: from now on, no matter what, I will accompany them to the hospital! But I’m still worried that they want to go to the hospital but won’t tell me, still telling me, “It’s okay. Pretty good. No need.”
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