I had primed them all winter long by sending snippets to Florida of items culled from the Internet such as photos of a bus stop in Hollywood and dissertations on some of their favorite TV shows. My mother even made sounds like "Maybe your father and I will get a Mac and take some lessons after we see how it works at your house." I was encouraged.

When they arrived for their annual summer soujourn at my house, all systems were up and running. I could barely contain myself until the exact right moment when I could show my mother the new Mac clone setup. I had decided that she would be the entry point to interest them both to go online.

But that "exact right moment" was suspiciously slow to appear. First jet lag (understandable); then mere fatigue from age (also understandable). Then "The Nanny' is on and I don't want to miss it." But finally she was sitting in front of the screen; I wanted her to have hands-on experience from the start.

I soon learned she had never used a mouse and well, did you ever watch someone learn how to use a mouse? It seems so intuitive once you get it, but before you get it, it's like trying to learn to swim - a lot of flopping around with no buoyancy. When she was proficient enough with the mouse, we opened AOL (America Online) and began to play.

It was apparent very early on that dear Mom was resisting the cybersiren's lure. There wasn't that excitement that one gets when a new world opens up. I wondered what the unmovable obstacle would turn out to be.

After the second session, it became evident: Her bifocal glasses caused her to tilt her head back to see through the midvision lenses and that caused her neck to ache. I was doomed; there was no way that she would buy another pair of midvision glasses for something she wasn't sold on to begin with.

Perhaps it was time to work on my father. If I could get him excited about the process, maybe he would work on my mother so that they would both use a computer. She would take the lessons and he would hunt and peck.

One evening, I asked my Dad to take a look at the on-screen excitement I had been buzzing about all summer. He graciously sat besides me as I accessed the Net.

Dad was suitably impressed by the magnitude of the information available, the color graphics, the little movie of last year's "Murder One" TV series, a chorus from a David Bowie album actually playing on my computer from its home page based in who knows where.

But he really perked up when I suggested we search for our surname to see just what was available. He was staggered to see that there were over 3,000 references online. We searched through the first ten and spotted his cousin, R.O. Blechman, a major cartoonist. We went to this site and I printed out a photo of his cousin.

After it dropped out of the ink-jet printer, I placed it in his hands, he said, with a big smile on his face, "I haven't seen this man in 30 years. He looks just like his father!" I knew I had scored.

I still don't know whether or not the various online experiences that the two of them had over the summer infected them with the Internet bug -- probably not. But I won't ever forget my father's excitement over that photograph.