Just got an e-mail from “The Captain.”  Apparently she has forgotten how to use spell check…again.  After a bit of decoding, it appears that my brother Matthew, aka the Golden Child, is coming in “nex” week, or next week?  I’m not quite sure.

The message from “The Captain” reveals a mere symptom of a much larger problem.  My mom is a technology flunkie.  My father–a close second.  (I’ll admit to third place.)  Hence the visit from the Golden Child.

I kid you not when I say that my brother is coming to Pittsburgh from Rhode Island to re-program their remotes.  Someone hit something, and things have gone straight to hell at the McClelland house.  They’ve been going old school for the past few weeks; they now walk up to the television and manually change the channel.  This has brought my father to his knees.  He has shed real tears.  He is a broken man, a shell of his former self.

My brother is their Geek Squad.  He is their salvation.  He is saving their remotes from being thrown out the window or at one another.  He is saving their 38-year marriage from the brink of divorce.

The Golden Child has been called upon because he is also the root of their woes.  He repeatedly convinces them to purchase technology that is well beyond their abilities, leading to pain and suffering for all.  For three years they watched the non-HD stations on their HDTV.  Hundreds of stations to choose from, yet they stuck with the basics:  ABC, NBC, and CBS.  They were safe and happy in their little three channel box.

“The Captain” curses his name regularly for the purchase of iPad, on which she can do little more than play solitaire and “Like” every single post of her Facebook friends.  (Just this week she “liked” the passing of our neighbor’s dog.  Who “likes” that?)

After the Mother’s Day coup he scored with his Facebook photo montage, I have no sympathy.  We all must pay the piper, Matty Boy.

I have walked in your shoes, Golden Child.  You remember that fateful Christmas we were all told by “The Captain” that she wanted no gifts; she wanted our time.  We begged her to allow us to buy gifts.  This was NOT going to be pretty.

Matthew, Mindy, and I were all assigned a class and time slot in which we were to teach “The Captain” some tidbit of technology that she just couldn’t quite get her head around.  Matthew would be teaching a course on how to turn on the new flat screen.  Mindy would be her PlayStation instructor, so that she could work out to Dance Dance Revolution.  My responsibility was of a much higher order than my siblings; I was to teach “The Captain” how to cut and paste text.

I can assure you, dear readers, that we are back to square one.  “The Captain” is none the wiser for our gifts of time, blood, sweat, and tears.  No Dance Dance Revolution going on here.  These valuable lessons have been forgotten.

And so big brother Golden Child I have one thing to say…Good luck with that.  See you “nex”week.