Featured photo: Asking a friend for help with making the computer work. (Courtesy photo)
(Last week, a nearby lightning bolt fried the modem on my computer. I had it replaced but it brought to mind an article I had written years ago about my introduction to computers. It seems fitting today to share that story.)
As much as I depend on my computer, the thing sometimes nearly scares me to death. Recently, it put the hoo-doo on me.
When I was preparing to retire from my 30 year career as a social worker, I already knew how I’d be spending my time after retirement. I’d update my status as an outdoor writer from part time to full time.
I was faced with a big decision. Should I continue to write articles in long hand, scratching out and editing before typing the final product on my typewriter, or would I take the plunge into the computer world?
My journalist friend, the late Wiley Hilburn, occasionally wrote about his mortal fear of computers. If Wiley could, week after week, crank out those incredible columns of his on an old standard clunker, maybe I should stick with what had worked to this point for me.
I’d attend a writer’s conference and they’d talk about desk top publishing and Windows and Page Makers and Mac and somebody would ask me which I used. I’d shuffle my feet, cough nervously and mumble something about not having made up my mind just yet. I felt like I was in the Indy 500 driving a Studebaker. I was behind the times and I knew it, but didn’t want to admit I didn’t know diddly squat about computers.
I’d stand in front of the computer store, watching until all the salesmen were busy before going in. Cautiously circling a model on display, I would survey the square eye as if it were a caged tiger at the zoo and I didn’t want to venture too close. I wouldn’t see the salesman walking up behind me and I’d jump as if nudged with a cattle prod when he, all preppy and computer-savvy would ask if I needed help.
“Just looking”, I’d say. I had already learned to get out of there quickly before he started pointing out the features on the slick model before me and making me feel like the ultimate doofus as he described the serial ports, the mouse and the modem.
One day, feeling particularly bold, I stayed for the whole sales pitch although I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. He finished and looked at me, anticipating a question about what server I should select.
I left him slack-jawed when I asked, “How do you turn it on?” He flipped a switch and there were beeps and chirps and the glass eye magically came to life. The salesman began his pitch again and once more, I stopped him in his tracks with “How do you type on it?”
He was finally getting the picture, I surmised, that he was dealing with a real goober. I sat down tentatively in front of the screen and typed out, “Now is the tome for ale doog men….” He showed me how to correct my mistakes and edit what I had written, how to store it, how to bring it back to the screen and how to print what I had written.
Finally, the thing began making sense and I gradually lost my fear of damaging the machine by simply typing on it or it nuking me. I bought it, took it home and a whole new world opened for me. Then why do computers still give me the willies sometimes
I had almost completed my article for the week, a warm whimsical piece on the approach of fall and hunting seasons. Without warning, we lost power, and my story was dumped into a black hole, I assumed gone forever. When the power came back on, try as I might, I couldn’t come up with those poignant phrases that had so easily rolled off my finger tips moments before.
So there I sat, pen and yellow tablet in hand, writing with the same tools I used twenty years ago about how modern technology had done a number on me.
I’m thinking that maybe Wiley could have been on to something here.