It has been a long wonderful summer, one spent with nature, children and grandchildren, back porch dining, and lazy afternoons in a wicker chair reading in the shade. But the seasons are changing and I now huddle indoors as torrential rain turns my lovely landscape to ruin. The fall weather reminds me that I must face my foe since my dreams are tied to it, this slender, gray-metal device with its gateway to the land of dashboards, system preferences, utilities, mission controls, word and excel, and the document swallowing iCloud. So I swallow my dread, open the lid, and say a small prayer …… Dear God, help me deal with what they have updated, changed, or removed since I’ve been gone. I hear no answer. God doesn’t need technology, but unfortunately I do.
Most of my anxiety comes from my extreme dislike of typing. Dredging up my old high school typing inefficiencies, I was terrified when computers began invading our lives in the 1980s and 90s. Back then, I watched as my husband and daughters waited patiently for “dial-up” over the phone line to transport them to realms beyond imagination. I wanted to crawl back in my cave and draw stick figures, but I soon discovered workplaces were demanding everyone to learn. I worked as a teacher’s assistant then, and Gary, the media coordinator (previously known as library teacher when I was in school) offered to give me a quick tutorial. After a brief instruction, he told me to give it a whirl, and whirl it I did. Within ten minutes I succeeded in locking down the library’s entire computer system. Hours later, he succeeded in undoing the damage, and he never offered another teaching invitation.
Plain and simple…computers are not for me….. but then we moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Needing to find a new job, I searched the Help Wanted section in the newspaper (in those good old days) and saw that every good job desired computer skills. Buckling under the new way of the world, I enrolled in a class at a local community college and bought a textbook thicker than the M Encyclopedia Britannica (reference books of information sold in a set—topics from A-Z). Have you ever tried to memorize the M Encyclopedia Britannica? I drove home with a heavy heart.
Many weeks later, I had not memorized my Computer Encyclopedia Britannica but spent hours placing multicolor sticky notes on every other page, hoping I’d access the page quickly when I started my newly acquired computer skilled job. I set that big book on my desk ready to go. My supervisor smiled when she saw my book. She said, “You won’t be needing that.” I slid my big book in a lower drawer as she handed me the company’s M-sized Computer Encyclopedia Britannica and walks away. Why God, why does it have to be so hard? But my prayers couldn’t be heard over the factory noise outside the office area.
So I survived—I learned, and managed to move up to better jobs. And with that upward movement, I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. It was there I became acquainted with a program called Word. Oh…my…Word! With steady term paper demands, Word was to be my constant companion. We had a rocky relationship from the get go. Word was needy. Word wanted me to press Save every two or three words, and if I didn’t, Word would stub up on me. Literally! Freeze up, go down, and after its little tantrum all that was left of my paper was a shabby sentence or two. I lost my religion multiple times. Said words, shameful words, words a sailor wouldn’t utter—I typed and cried to the wee hours because I didn’t Save, Save, Save.
As time went by, the Internet speed improved; Word and I became friends; I finished college and landed a great job, worked for years, retired—my computer worries were finally over. For a blissful month or two, I basked in a tranquil world— then I began to dream of a writing career.
My chum, Word was there every step of the journey. With the finishing my novel and my current quest to publish it, all the successful writers tell you to become a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and most important you should have a Blog. So here I go again—clueless, back to bottom of the virtual pool of ignorance. Load pictures, use hash tags, become a follower, insert Emojis, load videos, on and on. Their operations confused me, but I typed on. My latest attempt has been my Blog. I signed up. I paid the money. No guidebooks the size of anything, no human Helpdesks. Only videos of people talking very fast: headings, titles, picture placement, writing areas, tons of simple options. I would have felt no more intimidated had they suggested I swim in shark-infested waters. Lord, “Why a Blog again?” God ignored me.
As I watch the instructions over and over, those beautiful young people in the Blog videos make promises beyond measure. In her dreamy snappy voice she says, “When your Blog site is completed, do these simple four thousand steps and the site will automatically transport your Blog announcement to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, Snapchat, remote villages in Asia, across the universe….And best of all, you will find this, so simple and so easy to do!” Beautiful Person went silent and off I went.
Five days and eight hours in, my framework chosen, pictures loaded, titles, my writing there— I begin the simple four thousand steps. When these are all accomplished, I check Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google, Snapchat, remote villages in Asia, but I skip the universe. Where are all my announcements? I see no headlines, nothing at all! Hmm, now for the next few hours I do the simple steps again and again. Over and over, then oops, wrong step, back out of that, then press Send—MY ENTIRE BLOG GOES BLANK!… All my stories, pictures, hard work—gone into a virtual dark hole.
In an instant, I managed to lose what little religion I’d reclaimed over the past few years. My husband came running when he heard books slamming against the wall and my shameful language. He calmly said, “Let me see if I can help. You must be doing something wrong.” That was a very gutsy thing for him to say as I stood wild eyed, still holding a book in my hand. Within minutes, he had my stories, photos, all of it back. I felt so stupid. I am cursed, I just can’t get computers to work for me. Husband then boots up the lovely videos with the Beautiful Young People for instructions to those “little simple steps” as I go lie down on the couch and leave him be. Near bedtime he trudges into the living room and says, “Something’s wrong. Those stupid steps don’t work.”
I smile. Maybe God does care about my computer woes— I could have sworn I heard God say, See, I told you it wasn’t you.