22/08/2023
In Which I Prank My Mum and Then Feel Forever Guilty
Something most former teenagers will be familiar with is falling out with your parents for some trivial reason. Once you graduate to adulthood, you realise that actually, you were kind of a dick head.
I was in this situation once, at some point I had decided my life was incredibly unfair and my no doubt long-suffering mum was the reason for it. I decided to pull a classic act of vengeance on her.
I went on her computer, took a screenshot of the desktop and set it as the wallpaper. I then hid the start menu and put all her desktop icons into a folder with no icon, the folder name being an invisible ASCII character. (It's ( ) if you need to use it - yes, whilst you cannot name a file or folder a single space, you can use this invisible ASCII character).
The end result was perfect, nothing seemed out of place, and yet what awaited my mother was a computer that wouldn't do anything she wanted it to.
Now it's fair to say my mum isn't the best with technology, so what entailed was me watching her sat in silence, at her desk, trying to do things and not even realising anything was amiss. She must have just attributed the computer not doing what she wanted to her own ineptitude (her favourite catchphrase is "Why is this doing this?").
Experiencing this miserable sight made me feel immediately terrible. I was just stood watching, rooted to the spot because I didn't want to admit I had done anything. I decided to take over and do what she needed to do for her. She even appreciated me "helping".
Now, this was about 16 years ago and yet I still think about it and get hit with pangs of guilt.
Be nice to your parents.
Sorry, mum.