on shooting blanks

The McDimple Girls pooled our money this past Christmas and bought our parents a computer. As expected, they were thrilled with the present and then lovingly chastised us for spending our "hard-earned money on such a pricey gift." We get the same speech every year and every year we choose to ignore it.

So for the past few months my sisters, brothers-in-law and I have been taking turns showing the parents how to turn on/off the computer, print things, sign on to the Internet and retrieve/send email. Here's what I just found in my inbox:

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From: Ma and Pa McDimple
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 8:31 PM
To: curly@curlymcdimple.com
Subject: Re: Pictures



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Let's grade their progress, shall we? Turning on the computer? Check! Signing on to the Internet? Checkerooni! Retrieving email? Affirmative! Sending email? Uh, improvement needed.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go schedule an email refresher course...