Adventures in Parental Video Conferencing

(Note to Mom: We are teasing )

“Can you hear me?”

“I can’t see you”

“I can’t hear you”

“The picture. It’s all weird. Like little boxes. It’s weird. Honey? Can you see us?”

Jason goes to get coffee, getting as far away from the situation as possible

“Mom. I know what the problem is. Something is wrong with the signal”

“It’s weird. It’s just like little boxes”

Jason searches for handgun

“I KNOW. I’m working on it”

“Honey? Can you see us. The picture, it’s weird. Like little boxes.”

BANG

We just ended our Saturday morning video chat with my Mom and her husband down in Florida (side note: isn’t it weird that I refer to my mom’s husband as my mom’s husband and not my stepdad? I think it’s because they got married when I was in my late 20s…..anyways. yes.). We try and video with them via “the skype” over “the internet” at least every week so that they can see the Lu-Dog do all of her new tricks.

There is something wrong with the volume, first of all, that has been happening for the past month or two. It’s like they have the sensitivity up to super high on their end, and my mom’s voice is in some other dimension in terms of tone and volume and so it comes all “EEEEEEEEEEE” with some words thrown in there. So then our conversation is something like:

“Hey mom. Don’t talk so loud because your voice is all distorted. Like maybe move back from the computer a little bit”

“Ok. Is this better?”

“Yep. Ok here is Lucy!”

“EEEEEE HI LUEEEEEECYEEEEEEEEEE”

“MOM! YOU HAVE TO TALK QUIETER”

Jason under his breath: Oh my god…

“OEEEKEEEE. LUCEEEEYEEEEEEEE”

Me: big sigh.

Today I happened to be uploading some pictures to the smugmug and so our bandwith was being used up by that and hence the “little boxes”. Once I switched that off everything was fine and it was totally my fault, but woof.

I love videoing with her because I don’t get to see her live very often and I love for Lucy to get to see her, but it’s always a very funny experience.