I am writing this from my new laptop – a MacBook. Lovely little piece of equipment – I have named her Lucy (as in “Lucy, I’m h-o-m-e”) with the hopes that we will enter into a long-term relationship of mutual respect and understanding.
We have a long way to go.
First of all, I’ve always been a ThinkPad person. All my earlier relationships have been with its different iterations. I knew what it was going to do before it did it – not needing to look at the keyboard, understanding the nuances of its prompts, able to keep multiple conversations ongoing without any need to cajole, plead or praise excessively. We knew each other. My files, saved pictures, ideas for future posts, etc resided in ‘my places’. We made space for each other and dare I say it, had that kind of intimate knowledge of each other reserved for only the closest of friends.
However, my ThinkPad was beginning to resist my ‘Good Morning’, refusing to awake until I re-booted multiple times. It was beginning to bristle at my demands and would arbitrarily just shut down while we were still talking (so to speak). It was becoming clear to me that we were tiring of each other – and we hammered out the details of our cyber-divorce. Right now she is upstairs, happily sleeping on a bookcase, thrilled to be rid of my furious banging and rants that I always directed at the screen.
Lucy is a laptop with a mind of her own – which I respect. I like independent thinkers. But she’s not even trying to be a pal. I can’t find the delete key (on this keyboard, ‘delete’ is really ‘backspace’), different applications keep bouncing up and down seeking my attention and don’t even ask me where my files are (though I know they’re here somewhere – I think this is a little passive-aggressive, but let’s not go there). To move the cursor down, I have to move my finger up on the mouse. It took me twenty minutes this morning just to figure out how to get the power cord extender to work. Clearly we are going to have to take this relationship very slowly. In fact, I am going to take her to a relationship specialist at Apple on Thursday – we have got to work on how we communicate with each other. Right now I’m making all the concessions in the name of maintaining a happy transition. She’s not doing a damn thing except sitting here pointing out my spelling mistakes and frankly, digging in her heels about what she will and will not do. Everyone insists how intuitive these MacBooks are – all I have to say to that is ‘ha’! She’s intuitive alright – she knows just how to make me feel like a nimnut.
I will rise to her challenge though – I am determined to make her my good friend, whether or not this is a relationship she would like to see move forward. We are going to learn how to talk with each other, remain open and available and delight in our journey. I will keep her clean and shiny and promise not to dribble coffee on her keys. She will show me where she has hidden my pictures, quotes, secrets and bad jokes that I never can remember. This is going to be a union made in techno-heaven. We are going to love each other with devotion. We will dammit. But first I need to find an instruction manual.
Waiting for the Karma Truck 