My dad and his brothers thought they had a great idea: They would buy my grandmother a computer with e-mail, thus alleviating their guilt for having moved as far away from her as possible. Believe it or not, guilt is a strong force in Jewish households. (“Sure, no, stay at the party as long as you want; just be aware that your tired mother is cutting off one of her own toes for every half-hour you’re gone.”)

Giving my grandmother a computer is like giving a squirrel a passenger aircraft. It’s not a horrendous idea, per se, but one shouldn’t expect the squirrel to master the altimeter within the first hour. In fact, one shouldn’t expect the squirrel to do more than gnaw on the wheels.

Not that Grandma gnawed on her computer. That would require teeth. But she did, at one point, use the keyboard to swat a cockroach on the back steps. That’s when my dad decided I should go teach her how to use this new machine.

I’m no computer expert, but I was able to identify the problem with Grandma’s setup right away: Other than the keyboard, which had a two-dimensional cockroach hanging from one side, all of the other components were still in the box.

There is an age cutoff, you see, beyond which one refuses to absorb new technology. My grandmother hit her barrier in about 1979, giving her full ability to use, say, a toaster, or—by the grace of a few months—a VCR. Anything that emerged since then (DVD players, a microwave, stuffed-crust pizza) baffles her.

Luckily modern computers come with foolproof assembly instructions such as, “Plug the LIME GREEN keyboard cable into the LIME GREEN port, you moron.” Yet Grandma had read this as, “Ignore the strange gadget in the box and go wipe the kitchen table a few more times.”

We began with the basics. “Do you know how to open Windows?” I asked Grandma.

Setting the tone for the next several hours, she replied, “Usually I just turn down the thermostat.”

For about half the day (i.e., the half I didn’t spend being force-fed), I showed Grandma how to use her more advanced hardware, such as the mouse, the keyboard, and the desk. We ended with a lesson on how to double-click, which was like teaching a newborn fawn to do multivariable calculus.

That was Day One. Day Two: the Internet. Grandma described the Internet as “confusing” and “why aren’t you married yet?”

Since she still seemed puzzled and skeptical, I tried to direct Grandma to a website she’d enjoy. “What’s something you like to do?” I asked.

“I like to put on the heating pad when I take a nap,” she said, her face brightly optimistic that maybe the computer could help.

Bewildered and out of ideas, I suddenly recalled Grandma’s failing memory. “Oh!” I said. “I like to buy vintage comic books too. Here’s a web page that sells them!”

Though otherwise different, Grandma and her computer did share one property—they both had Random Access Memory. To hear her expound on a topic, all one had to do was ask her something else entirely.

ME: Can I get a glass of water?
GRANDMA: Oh yes, he cut his hair off with scissors when he was a little boy, and that’s why your uncle is bald.

Finally we got to e-mail, or, as Grandma called it, “that thing.” For some, e-mail is a quick and convenient timesaver. The problem is, Grandma types about as fast as Grandma moves, which is usually slow enough to allow lichens to flourish in her creases. So by the time a normal person would have typed an entire e-mail, Grandma would have successfully dismissed seven or eight keys as “probably not the space bar.”

After I returned home, my parents began sending her an e-mail every day in an attempt to pile-drive into Grandma’s skull the idea that E-MAIL IS USEFUL. Here’s a typical message:

Subject: Hello!
Hi! It’s me! How are you? I’m typing to you using E-MAIL! This doesn’t cost anything!

Then Grandma, entirely missing the point, would pick up the phone and call us.

So the next time you’re cruising down the Information Superhighway, keep an eye out for my grandmother. She’ll be the one with her left blinker on.