Hey Dad, will you please print this out for Mom Thanks.

I remember the first time I fired up Netscape on a computer in the library of the law firm I had just started working at in 1995. I think I went to Yahoo and clicked on some things, and called it a day. For the next year the Internet was mostly about receiving and forwarding email jokes. Some of my friends were really excited about being joke &''hubs.&''

Thank God that&'s all history. Jokes are rarely forwarded by email any more. It&'s been replaced with spam.

Anyway, back to my mom, who occasionally shows up here in a cameo appearance. Until this year the Internet was a theoretical thing for my mother. If she needed something from it she&'d use a verbal query, something like &''Jack (my dad), will you look up Oprah Winfrey&'s tv schedule for me&'' Or whatever. If I wanted to send her an email I&'d send it to my dad and he&'d print it out for her and then type back whatever she said after reading it.

I honestly considered getting her one of those ridiculous Presto printers. Instead I bought her an iMac and my dad showed her how to do email. She&'s now proudly in control of a very nice comcast.net email address.

And since then, for months and months now, I receive an email a day from my mom with a 1995-era joke, usually of the sickeningly cute variety. Or an email admonishing me to &''be nicer to people in your posts.&'' Like these (all actual emails from my mom):

and

and

Of course I&'ve shared this with the TechCrunch team internally as a sort of cathartic exercise. Apparently I&'m not the only one with relatives living in another era:

What to do Never let her find out about Twitter and Facebook, that&'s what. I love you, Mom, I really do. I&'ve never once hit &''report spam&'' on one of your emails, and I save them all. Just&8230'please&8230'stop.