Family tech support is not for the faint of heart

“You know about computers; can you help me hook up my new printer?”

Why, oh why, did I pick up the phone? Am I ever going to learn to screen my calls the way normal people do?

Like an idiot, I said yes. It’s hard to turn down relatives. And Cousin Betsey did lend me some money years ago, which I do plan to pay back someday. And I do know about computers: I know how to turn them on, and I know how to dial the support number. That makes me a computer genius -- to people who don’t know any teenagers.

Teenagers used to shovel snow and mow lawns for a few extra bucks. Now they upgrade computers and tell you to delete emails from ThisIsACompleteScam.com. For this, they don’t even ask for money, because they get the deep satisfaction of knowing they have helped an elderly person cross the digital street.

Ha! Just kidding. That’s not even close to the reason. They get the deep satisfaction of knowing that they can now use your password to play violent multiuser video games when you’re not around.

Even if you do know a teenager, they have to be right there in the room in order to fix your computer. It doesn’t do any good to call them on the phone and explain the problem. It’s like talking to a brick; they cannot understand the words coming out of your mouth. When you speak, they hear something like, “When I push the thingy with the other thingy nothing happens. Well, not exactly nothing; the computer asks me to go to Printer Settings and click on the button that says ‘Destroy everything that’s good and beautiful on planet Earth and live forever in shame and misery for the evil I have done.’ Should I push it?”

Short answer: Why not? See what happens. Long answer: It’s 2017. Why are you printing anything? You email pictures. You post them on Facebook or Snapchat. Throw your printer out the window and live a long and happy life. Oh, but you can’t do that because Cousin Nancy doesn’t use Facebook. She doesn’t even have email.

“I don’t want to know what people ate for breakfast,” she says. She’s the whole reason you have to have a printer -- to send her printed copies of photos of Cousin Sandy’s new baby.

Cousin Nancy is a menace. She’s gumming up the whole system. She won’t get a cellphone, won’t shop online.

“What do I need a cellphone for?”

“Because you are the only reason I’m on my hands and knees in front of a computer hutch trying to figure out where all the wires go,” I want to say to her, but she’s not here. (Yes, I understand it’s a wireless printer, but you still have to plug the stupid thing in.)

So I’m wasting my Saturday at Betsey’s, who had to buy a new printer, all because Nancy can’t be bothered to live in this century. For her next birthday, I’m thinking of buying Nancy pantaloons and a hoop skirt. If she’s going to live in the past, she could at least dress like it. She can write me a thank-you note with a quill pen.

After two hours of tinkering, downloading a new printer driver and firmware, several chats with “Bob” in Mumbai and a few how-to YouTube videos, we got it up and running. It printed a perfect test page. Then another one and another one and another one -- it wouldn’t stop until it told us it was out of ink.

The ink will cost much more than the printer did. I suggested we ask Cousin Nancy to pay for it, but Betsey pointed out that I was the one who had “fixed” the printer.

I am never answering my phone again.