My mother is a forum moderator. Lollerskates.

Two months ago my mother was completely computer illiterate. She didn’t even know how to turn the computer on and off. One day she received a phone call from a high school classmate of hers that she hadn’t heard from in well over 30 years. Apparently said classmate was trying to find people of their graduating year for some sort of reunion. A few phone calls later my mother was informed that there was an online guestbook set up where classmates of hers had been corresponding with each other.

My mother resolved to learn how to get on board the whole thing. I helped her create an email account, taught her the very basics of MS Word and she learnt by herself (quite quickly I might add) how to type pinyin. Before long, she typed up her first entry on the guestbook.

One day she came into my room excitedly, telling me that there’s been over 300 view counts on her entry and that many people told her that she should write more and they loved her writing. My mother had always secretly aspired to be a writer and so she was absolutely over the moon with the responses. I’m not actually sure what she wrote but it sure sounded like it was almost like group blogging. MY MOTHER WAS BLOGGING.

Class sizes back then involved upwards of 50 people per class and about 10+ classes per year so any reunion (online or otherwise) is pretty big. I guess the site coordinator saw how unwieldy the guestbook format was with so many people involved and s/he replaced it with a forum instead. And appointed my mother as a moderator of the “International” section of the board for classmates that now have left China and live aboard. It was so freaking adorable how bashfully exhilarated but happy my mum was to be given this e-responsibility.

It’s a pretty lively forum too. Peeking over her shoulder I see there’s always at least one or two people viewing the board at any one time. My mum excitedly shows me posts often, where she and other posters would post little messages to each other followed by what would be to us, rather tacky animated gifs (you know the ones of sparkly Korean cartoons or dancing babies) though my mum and her classmates think they are absolutely brilliant. Mum is also really proud of the fact that people tend to always reply to her messages more so than other people. xD It’s all so cute and endearing. One of the happiest times in my life is to see my mum happy. :3