Hug your computer
The Dear Lon Letter or did you give your computer a hug today?
For kids (and adults)
By Lon Hosford
Contrary to popular belief I have discovered that computers react to human emotion? Its true.
For example, have you observed how many more mistakes your computer makes on days that your sourpuss shows? You know, when you wake up and there's no hot water or maybe even no water. (If there is no hot water I usually boil a bunch of the stuff in the big spaghetti pot and attempt to shampoo while using the sauce pan to scoop the hot water from the spaghetti pot for rinsing. If you use this technique beware that the floor gets slippery and test the water temperature before pouring - yowowowowoooch!)
One day I got up really irascible and testy. I don't know if it was because the heat went off and the floor was about 22 degrees when my toes hit it or it was that I could see snow blowing sideways through my one small bedroom window and I knew I would shortly endure the sport of test your insurance policy bumper cars.
Perhaps it was the guy next store who fell asleep with the Shopper's Channel on full roar (Need a price on radar detectors, hair dryers or China dolls anyone? Now I know what subconscious learning is all about).
Then again it could have been the day before when my car spit up some black gunk in the radiator water and stopped cold in the pit of the New York City Holland tunnel. My car does some charming thing like that the first day its out of inspection (I was going to inspection the next day, really!).
Don't miss it though. The radio needs a bit of fixing. It only pulls the all news station and that after I fixed it (disassembled and reassembled without a clue what I was doing). Ask me to recite the 5 day forecast and the headlines on command. Before the repair work the radio just received a station that only played Ricky Riccardo songs. I fear if I piddle with it I may get senor¨ Ricky and his bongos back.
But I was mean, real foul. I was like rubbing alcohol, even water avoided me. By the time I got to my office I had grown mass transit callouses on both cheeks.
As I entered my office I heard a motor humming and the sound of paper rustling. The humming made me realize that I had left my computer on all night. But my attention was drawn more toward the rustling paper sound. My trap like mind (I am trapped by it), devoid of its morning caffeine, quickly surmised that there were rodents of some species mankind has not yet discovered.
So I slinked forward, commandeering a broom and rounded a set of bookcases blocking my view of my work area only to be blinded by a sea of white. It reminded of how my mother would wake me on Sunday mornings after I was out carousing the night before. (Oh, she would pull up the blinds on a day blessed without clouds. The parenting technique creates an unusual environment for open conversation between mom and son. My retinas still hurt thinking about it. And if it was winter, she'd open the windows after wrenching my blankets and sheets off just like that magic trick where a table cloth covered with good china is pulled - fleeooopppptssttst.)
For what ever reason, my computer had decided to unload its memory banks onto a 5,000 sheet box of paper I had just opened the day before. And although the paper had let out, it still was going, pulverizing my printer's roller (days of dot matrix jobs young ones).
I waded into the waist high paper, moving slowly so I would not stub my toe or conk my knee on the hidden desk or chair, towards where I thought was the computer. About half way there, I fell into the paper heap. It recalled those days my dad would rake leaves on the farm in big mounds and I would dive into them disappearing from the landscape. Only that was fun. This was not.
When, with about thirty or so paper cuts, I finally reached the computer, I made a small clearing to work and then my eyes finally focused onto the computer's screen:
"Dear Lon, (a dear Lon letter) I have had it with you day after day having me debug your programs, correct your math, and check your spelling. Plus I got to save all your garbage. Don't you ever throw anything out? You are just using me. You turn me on when you want and when you tire of me you shut me off. So I have erased all your files and don't want to interface with you again."
Not interface with me again? As you might imagine I thought I was still sleeping. But I found my computer would not work after that no matter what I tried. The best technicians could not restore it. I told them about the letter on the screen but they usually looked at me out of the tops of their eye sockets and smiled at me as if someone had modified the air without prior notice.
As a result, I sought psychological help. I found a specialist who deals with computer psychoses. Soon I was attending counseling sessions with my computer and today we are very happy together. I now erase unneeded files. I never ask my computer to spell a word unless I have not tried first (sometimes I even check the dictionary on my desk before typing), I read software manuals beforehand and I have brushed up on basic math skills.
And I give my computer a hug every day.
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