That Damn Daemon!

As I mentioned yesterday, my mom is not exactly the techno-wizard.  She decided to get email when I was living in Europe so that she would not have to spend money on phone calls to keep me updated on the minutiae of her life. 

There are three major issues with this:
1) she does not understand technology (proof to follow shortly),
2) she is the queen of the forwarded email (loathe that) and
3) she types like she has been kidnapped

This is an actual email I have received from her:

likeis gorgeous, looks a great eal like me
gave you the wrong infor. my flight arrivrs in colorado at 10 i will email in a little while if itis a problem let me knoe i can wait anr read a book or learn to typr

The issues are many fold as you can see.  It is totally stream of consciousness, no details (like airport, airline, flight number or, hell, even the day) are provided and she refuses to look at the keyboard (she took a typing class in 9th grade and swears it is like riding a bike).  She has also not mastered the backspace. 

However, the main issue is her abhorrence of all things techie.  My mom did not get that the e in email stood for electronic.  I am not sure how she thought this would work but here is how she "addressed" emails to me (and I am clearing out the typos).

To: "Joy"
Surprisingly, she got a bounce email.

To: "Joy, my daughter."

To: "Joy, my daughter, she has blond hair"

To: "Joy, my blond daughter who lives in Belgium but I think she is in Paris right now.  Please find her."

To: "Joy, the blond American in Europe who works at i2 and is married to Ken at NATO.  He is also blond.  In Paris, she lives across the street from a bakery.  In Brussels, they have tall bushes in their front yard."

{This would, quite possibly, be the worst email address ever.  And, for the record, this woman has a graduate degree.  Alas.}

Needless to say, she kept getting Bounce messages from "Daemon."  She was convinced that Daemon was a person and that he simply needed more information so that the email would be printed off and delivered to me.

So, then she started the following correspondence with Daemon.

"Dear Daemon, Thank you for your quick responses.  In my opinion, I have given you more than enough information to deliver mail to my daughter.  As you must understand, there can't be that many blond American Joy Love's who live in Belgium and are married to people at NATO.  This is my first time to email so I appreciate your assistance.  Thank you in advance for your cooperation."

Surprisingly, that evil Daemon refuses to help her.  The incident escalates {as you can imagine from my previous tales of my mother}.  Her final email to Daemon read something like "Dear Daemon, I would like the email to your supervisor.  I find your consistent refusal to help me email my daughter to be very frustrating.  You have more than enough information to locate her and yet no help is forthcoming.  Your quick responses indicate that you are not even reading all of the information I have provided before you tell me that it is not deliverable.  I think you are mistaking speed for efficiency."

Finally, she calls me and I explain that Daemon is "not a person whose parents misspelled his name."  It is an automated message, no one is reading her stuff, she needs to include the exact address or it won't get here, etc.  Her response was "Well, I guess I will email Daemon to apologize for calling him an asshole."

You simply can't make this kind of stuff up...