The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/16/07 Section: Opinions

I am a rapidly degenerating, 74-year-old man who is forced to try to join the generations below me in a futile quest to keep up with the computer. As a matter of fact, I never even learned how to typewrite; when everyone else was tapping away at their typewriter keyboards, I took Speech. In retrospect, I sure wish I had taken typing.

Because I sit here tonight typing on my computer keyboard (keypad? whatever) with two fingers, one on each hand, very, VERY slowly. No way can I turn out a column in the time that my old high school buddy, Jim King, could do it. Jim-now Dr. King-can blaze all kinds of trails on the keyboard. He even edits the state newspaper for his profession-and he refuses to split infinitives.

But I'd even do my column in the required (slow) time IF MY DAMNED COMPUTER WOULD WORK. I come in, turn the damn thing on, and sit back and wait for it to tell me that it won't work. That happens almost every time I sit down to do anything-send my daughter an email, send Dr. King an email, worst yet, send this column to Suzanne Merkelson, my Echo editor. I'm praying that I can finish before the computer shuts me down.

I even have a buddy in ITS at Colby who comes out to my house ("It's a small college, but we love it") to try to fix the damned thing. He does, and it lasts-the fix, that is-maybe 23 minutes. Then the damned little box that denies that I exist, really, that I EXIST, comes up on the screen, and I can't send anyone anything.

Now probably you will claim that any average 12 year old could deal with my damned computer, making it hum like a honeybee in the fields of flowers in Maine. The kid wouldn't be fazed by boxes of nonexistence; he'd push lots of keys and get it back to normal within minutes. Seconds even. Boys and girls can do that in 2007. They could years ago.

But I can't work the damned thing.

And neither can the hotshot from ITS. He can for a while, but not for a column's worth. So I sit in front of the computer screen and PRAY. Seriously, I pray that it'll last until I get done with my column, knowing that it'll wait until I'm ALMOST done, then make the box of nonexistence wipe the column out.

I'm going to quit now. The nonexistence box hasn't appeared yet. I'm going to hope that Suzanne will get this column now. I'm even going to try to send a copy to Dr. King.

But I'm not very confident. Nonexistence looms.

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