So last week, my mom calls me in as much of a panic-induced frenzy as I’ve ever heard. As soon as I picked up the phone she was wailing, “You have to help me! You have to help me!” which is a totally comforting thing to hear on the other end of the line. I’m all, “What happened? What’s wrong? Is everyone okay?” because that kind of hysteria is usually reserved for the moment before you start a sentence that ends in the words “jail” or “hospital.”
She’s all, “I need you to fix this, Nicole!” and I’m like, “Fix what?” and she’s all, “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” and I’m like, “GET CONTROL OF YOURSELF, WOMAN” and finally she takes a deep breath and says slowly, “Someone is inside my email.”
“Someone is what?”
Another deep breath, and she yells “INSIDE MY EMAIL! THEY GOT IN!” And I’m all, “Are you trying to say that your email account has been hacked?” and she’s like, “Yes! That! I didn’t send those emails! I need you to help me bring them back!” and I’m all, “Uh… that’s not how the internet works” and she lets out a high pitched, exasperated moan and says, “But. But. Nicole! Whoever is in my account has sent sex emails to my entire church!!”
“Don’t laugh,” I thought. But that was impossible. I imagined all of the little old ladies I had met at my mother’s church opening their Yahoo and Hotmail accounts and innocently clicking into a collage of hardcore sex. I heard my mother start to tip into full-scale nervous breakdown mode at the other end of the phone, and her tiny voice croaked, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, no. I sent pornography to Pastor Kelley!” in such an end-of-the-world tone of voice that I managed to suppress my laughter.
“The only thing I can help you do is change your password, Mom.”
“You mean you can’t go in there and bring all of the sex stuff back?”
“No.”
“Why not?? Just, you know, go in there.”
“The internet is not a crawl space under the house, Ma. Let’s just change your password.”
I logged into her account, clicked to the settings, and asked for the answer to her security question, “What is the name of my school?” to change the password. “What school?” she asked. “I don’t know! Whatever school you used when you created this account and its corresponding security questions.” There was a long pause, and then she said, “But… I don’t go to school” and I was all, “I KNOW, but you obviously chose this question and its answer, so what do you think you would have answered when you first set up this account?”
She thought for a few minutes, and then told me the name of her high school, which didn’t work. Then her middle school, which didn’t work. Then her elementary school, which didn’t work, and then we went a few more rounds before we weren’t allowed to try logging in anymore because the account had frozen. It wasn’t until about a half hour and 20 attempts later that we realized that she had used the name of one of my former schools for the answer.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. She ignored me and asked, “So, now that the password is changed, does that mean the sex emails have disappeared from Pastor Kelley’s inbox?”
It was my turn to sigh. “Yes, Mother, your new password has the power to erase porn.” She’s all, “Really?!” and I’m like, “NO! What do you think the internet does?” and she’s like, “RUINS LIVES WITH PORNOGRPAHY” and I’m like, “Huh, fair point actually” and she’s all, “What if the sex emailer comes back?” and I’m all, “Maybe the next batch of emails will be sent to your nieces, nephews, and all younger family members,” which is pretty much when she hung up on me in a flurry of wails and deeply depressed sighs.
A few minutes later my phone rang again, only this time it was my dad and he sounded like he was already in the process of wetting himself with convulsive laughter as he yelled, “YOUR MOTHER SEX-SPAMMED THE ENTIRE CONGREGATION!”
We then spent about 5 full minutes dying of laughter together, until I heard my mother cry in the background, “It’s not funny, Alvin! Stop laughing at me! JESUS AND I ARE HAVING A VERY BAD DAY.”
Posted in: i heart my crazy mother, life 2.0
{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
Yup, still funny.
This is precisely why a meeting between me and your parents NEEDS to take place.
you’re my favorite.
This is every kind of awesome.
Oh my god, I almost spit my water all over my monitor. This reminds me of the time my boyfriend’s mom was checking her e-mail at our house and she said “I am so sick of this guy sending me e-mails about penis enlargement! Should I just reply and ask him to stop sending them to me?” It was impossible trying to explain how spam works
IMMD
Since I’ve hung out with your truly lovely mother, I can actually hear this phone call in my mind and it’s KILLING ME with the hilarity. I’m having a really great day now, thanks porn and Jesus!
My mom would totally do that. Actually, my mom has practically done that, only I have to come sit in her house and try to explain it because I don’t have the benefit of being a plane ride away.
Haha, hillarious!! Can’t stop laughing; can so imagine this happening too. I bet Jesus was pissing himself too!
I die with laughter.
LOL… Oh my goodness… This totally made my day!!
This totally set my day up to be awesome.
PS-remember back in the day when everyone had AOL and you could unsend e-mails if the person didn’t read them yet? Why did that go away from the internet?
I can’t stop laughing. I could see my mother doing the exact same thing.
They haven’t blocked your blog at work yet, but given the number of times sex and pornography were used in this post, I am sure a red flag has been sent to IT and they are closely monitoring my internet use now. LOL.
I love this because I can see a number of my lesser technology intuned family members doing this.
All I can say is: AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Thank your mother for my daily dose of pee-my-pants laughter.
This just made my morning. I don’t even know what else to say.
Seriously, I need to keep reading your posts before I teach a class to undergrads who barely stay awake, because that just made my morning!!
“Jesus and I are having a bad day” Priceless. Please keep posting about your mother.
This post might beat out the ice vest story as my all time favorite. I mean, fried chicken is still #1, but this is close.
CANT WAIT TO SEE YOU IN OCTOBER!!!!!!!!
LOL. “The Internet is not a crawl space under the house, ma!” I freakin’ love you. And your ma.
Make that Jesus, your mom, me and Artemis are having a bad day. PS Artemis is my hemorrhoid. You’re welcome for that. And so far he is totally unmoved by porn.
Holy crap. Thank you. That just made my day.
First I’m peeing myself from laughing. Second sometimes when you post I can hear you reading it to me in my head (I know – weird), but it’s even funnier when I hear the voice you use for your mom. I’m only coming down to visit if I can meet her!
Oh God, (no pun intended) but this is the best thing I’ve read in awhile. Let’s just all pray that Pastor Kelley and the rest of the congregation make a full recovery! Clearly they’ll need all their strength to help your sinner degenerate of a mother make her way back to the safety of Jesus’ non-pornographic arms.
Tee hee. My favourite part is you and your dad laughing hysterically together! Awesome.
Trash eating glory hole hipster rainbow meat dead hooker dead.
Holy fucking crap….the same thing happened to my mom and she sent porn to my email address. I actually told her “hey thanks mom for the porn”. She gave me a confused look, ran to her computer, opened her email and saw what was sent and all the response and she screamed in fury. I love moments like that. Hackers….gotta love ‘em.
This is hilarious. Your mom is so cute.
I just don’t think it gets any better than this.
I’m doing that thing where I shake I’m laughing so hard. Thank you for this gem.
Awesome just doesn’t cover it….you (and your mom) made my day!
amazing.
I think I need to leave work now becuase after reading that I’m going to be totally unproductive.
That’s hilarious. I’m glad my mom is proficient with the computer/internet. My dad however, probably wouldn’t even realize he was hacked.
this is amazing. just amazing.
I wanted to post this to twitter. So.awesome. Thank you for sharing
How is it that we’ve never met, but have the same mother? My mom still doesn’t understand that she should never use that spam-ridden email account again since she was blocked from changing the password. I only wish she belonged to a church that she could have sent porn to…
“I sent pornography to Pastor Kelley!”
oh my god, this seriously made my day.
That’s amazing. Absolutely amazing.
I am dying of laughter in the middle of work and feel this is probably woefully inappropriate to share with my curious co-workers, but holy crapestry, I needed that laugh.
I am now a fan of your mother. And the email hacker. I bet God has a sense of humor and was doubled over in laughter when Pastor Kelley opened that email. XD
I don’t want to alarm you, but I think our mothers may be dopplegangers.
DON’T PANIC.
I saw this shit on an episode of the X-Files before. Once I got past Scully’s unfortunate haircut I think they threw water on them or something.
So, we just need to simultaneously dump a bucket of water over both mothers’ heads. It’s cool, once they understand what we are doing, I’m sure they’ll be fine. I mean, they’ll melt into a puddle of blue goo, but this shit needs to be done.
For the good of humanity.
(Mine likes to say “I don’t know how they got into my email/Facebook/etc. I didn’t click on ANYTHING. I *swear* I didn’t click on anything. I’m not lying. I swear. They just magically got in somehow. Like internet burglars or something.”)
Oh My God! I needed this laugh more than you could possibly imagine! Sorry it is at you mom’s expense! It is stuff like this that makes me sad that my mom died and will never have an email account!
This could not be a more spectacular story if it tried. Bravo! (And thanks for the HUGE, it-could-totally-be-my-mom laughs today!)
These stories about your mom NEVER get old. God I love her!
this brought tears to my eyes I laughed so hard, THANK YOU! I was having a really shitty day until I read this. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
Too funny! This just totally made my morning.
Oh. My. God. Your mom is hilarious. And this is totally something that my mom would do too – she’s always calling me and asking me to fix computer problems that I’m frigin Steve Jobs or something
I love your mom. Can you have her call me for random, daily, hilarious antics too? K, Thanks!
Unfortunately my mom, and my wife got hit by this as well.
It wasn’t so funny when my 6 year old daughter saw this, when my wife opened it. (all of 2 seconds!)
(I came by your blog via Lisa Barone – Outspoken media, this blog is not my usual haunt!). Unfortunately it seems Microsoft & Yahoo are dropping the ball, when it comes to protecting emails accounts hackers.
Right now its easily remedied by changing passwords-but thats going to change when the cracking programs become more sophisticated. I would recommend using a gmail account. A company that successfully keeps out the Chinese goverment, from hacking dissident accounts is a company I feel takes security seriously.
Unfortunately since a lot of the victims use the same password for multiple accounts, the ability for the hackers to have a field day is greater.
One technique I use is create a base password you never forget EX: “GENERALISIMO”
but modify the password when you visit each site – between the letters-
So if I go to http://www.nicoleisbetter.com – and have a user ID.
I type the website domain between the spaces of my password!
my password will be GnEiNEcRoAlLeIiSsIbMeOt
So if I go to http://www.cnn.com
my password would be GcEnNnERALISIMO
It slows you down when entering passwords
but is an easy way to remember them, and keep secure.
I think you get the idea.
Searchengineman
Haha, this story totally brightened my day and made me laugh out loud!
absolutely hilarious.
moms are the best, the way they think that the internet is out to get them and we are their only hope…
<3
THUMBS WAYYYYY UP! lol!!!
Ok, this is just as funny the second time I read it. Oh, moms.
I am literally crying at my desk, shaking from laughter. This reminds me so much of MY Mom, who has at least one internet related crisis per week. The latest? Calling me at 6AM in a sheer panic because she absolutely cannot figure out how to attach a document to her email. Not nearly as funny as spamming an entire church with porn, but I still chuckle every time I think about it.
OMGee! Why your mom doesn’t have a TV show or a TV show based on her life is beyond me. Best laugh I have had in months and I laugh quite a lot!
I know I am behind but just catching up on your blog and that was one of the best stories of all time! So funny.
Oh my, this cracked me up!
My Dad recently joined Facebook and managed to send a porn scam to the walls of each of my friends.
Gotta love parents and technology.
Oh, he also calls his cell-phone his ‘electric phone’.
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