You know the saying "you can't teach old dogs new tricks?"

Apparently, my paternal grandmother feels that way.

In this time and age, it has become important to be techno- savvy. My little brothers know how to operate a computer though Judo now knows to never ever press the delete button. (He learned the hard way- that to Cami's screams and cries). My maternal grandmother has a lot of software in her computer and I learned recently that she tinkers around with Adobe Photoshop. In the late 90s, my grandfather had a waaaaay better desktop and had more knowledge of the Internet than I did. Even my friend Rizzie's grandparents joined the Friendster bandwagon!

But my grandmother consciously avoids learning how to use the computer or a mobile phone because she feels she could never get it.

When mobile phones started to become a necessity, my uncle decided to get her a Motorola phone because it was the easiest and fastest way to get in touch with her. Otherwise, if we wanted to talk to her, you had to wait till late afternoon or early evening to catch her, after a day out doing charity work or being with her group of friends. Although she disliked it, she learned the basics- answering and making calls and storing numbers in the directory. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

To give you a sample of how un-techie my grandmother is, here's a scenario:

One day, my lola gave her mobile to one of my aunts.

Lola: Paki- basa nga yung mga messages ko. May natatanggap ako pero di ko alam pano basahin. (Please read my messages. I keep receiving messages but I don't know how to read them.)
Aunt: (gasps after reading one message) Ma, patay na si (insert name here)! (Ma, (insert name here again) is dead already!)
Lola: (gasps) Ha?!?!?! Kelan?! (Huh?! When?!)
Aunt: Nung August pa!
It was already October.

We always laugh at this anecdote. Everybody knows never to send a message to my grandmother because she'll never read it. But imagine my surprise when the day after Christmas, the day of my cousin Chino's birthday, I received an SMS message from my lola! It went something like this:

"Gd am, Chino! Happy 18th bday! We love you very much! Love Lolo & Lola Linda & Nanding"

I found it cute that she learned how to use shortcuts in her messages and that sometimes, there were 3 spaces in between each word. I figured that my grandmother must have mis-sent the message to me since in the family directory, my name and Chino's were right beside each other and so I forwarded the message to my cousin (who replied to my grandmother and mis-sent it to me too!).

Later on, I went downstairs while my family was having breakfast. I shared the news to them.

Me: Hey, guess what? Lola mis-sent me a birthday message for Chino!
Ara: Me too!
Mom: Me too!
Cami: I got that one too!

Apparently, my grandmother didn't know how to send messages completely so she just sent it to every member of the family. Eventually, she's gonna hit the right one, right?

Who says you can't teach old dog new tricks? You can! It's never too late. Just take a look at my grandmother. She's halfway there.