So I am zooming around the internet and realize there is something not right with the computer. It won't let me download anything. I am getting crazy messages about plugins being bad and so forth. So I look for Norton Anti Virus and run it. I also see that its gonna be awhile before its done - and i go to sleep. I wake up this morning and mom tells me that the computer is sick - that it has 8 different forms of some kind of "nimda" and other stuff she can't pronounce.

"Do you know what that means, Dawn?"
"It means that I don't get to sleep in this morning."
I grudgingly get out of bed and take a look at it. Sure enough - its got things crawling around everywhere. I'm surprised this hasn't shut down earlier.
"When do you ever run Norton?" I ask.
"I don't." Bad Mom. No internet.
"That explains this vast array of crap on the computer, then."
"So can you fix it?" Mom is getting nervous. This is her one outlet out of her existence as a housewife. If it dies - her freedom dies with it.
"I will do my best." And I will. The last thing I want is a bored Mom roaming about the house. It leads to her checking up on me when I am not around.

Then I launch into a tirade about the importance of a virus program. I tell her that right now - since she doesn't use any virus protection programs - it's like she is going through the internet like a hooker on a street corner that has no condoms (and no teeth). Wildly pointing and clicking to go wherever she wants - letting pop-up windows appear uncontrollably and excepting whatever emails come her way without caring what's in them or what they are about. Her computer is on the fast track to getting something worse than what it has. Either something expensive or something incurable.

"Ok ok.... whatever......But you can fix it, right?" Apparently Mom doesn't like lectures, either.
"Yeah, but I can't stop you from being an internet tramp."
"Well fix it so I can go do what I want to, and not worry about any consequences."
"If I could do that, mom, my teenage years would have been soooo much different."
Mom glares at me.
I smirk back.
A rare zinger that she can't dispute. I win.

So I diligently work on the computer for about two hours and manage to remove the virus - but the computer still won't download anything off the internet (including a much needed Anti Virus Program - how ironic). Mom is aghast.

"EEEK!! Dawn, what am I gonna do?" Mom is taking this news just about as well as a person who has just been told that their tongue has to be removed.
"Look, surely there is someone out on the net that can help you fix the rest of this." Then I realize that mom doesn't have the resources of people that I do. And we can't tell Dad - cuz we might get grounded (in a sense). Mom looks like she is about to come unglued.
There is only one solution to this.
I change my answer.
"Oh wait... my bad.... It works just fine now" I leave (really i ran out the door) just in time to see mom gleefully smiling and checking her email.

So... which brings me to my point (amazing this essay has one, isn't it?) - does anyone know what might be wrong? I can't download ANYTHING - it just makes the proggy look like an unshown picture on the net. I need some help, here. Basically I need to either solve the problem - or keep it under wraps until I take off for LA.

In any event - I bet mom didn't even learn her lesson of having a sick computer and is having unsafe coupling of servers as we speak. What a floozie ;-)