Virtual Grief for a Cyber-Buddy

Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. The previous was a phonetic representation of a funeral dirge, not adjectives describing a line of eleven people waiting overnight to buy tickets for “Dukes of Hazzard – The Musical.” The funeral dirge was played in honor of my trusty laptop computer which went to cyber heaven this week at the oh so young age of five years old. It surprised me how hard I took the news. Technology has always been a fun thing, but I thought I could take it or leave it.
I am content with four channels on my television. I am usually patient enough to cook without a microwave. We went without an answering machine on our phone for months until a friend became frustrated and bought us one. The best example of my technological indifference has to be my cell phone. The one I have at the moment has been mine for eight months. I have received sixty phone calls. The phone keeps track. I don’t. That works out to seven and a half calls a month. My most technologically advanced friend relies on his cell phone like a philodendron relies on photosynthesis. Seven and a half calls an hour would be slow, like glacier moving across Norway slow, for him.
There are some things I know how to do to “clean-up” the computer a little bit. I clicked the proper icons to start the defrag process (see I know some computer jargon). I then parked myself at my desk, staring at the little bar with the label stating 2% complete. I remained motionless as it stayed at 2% complete for about nine minutes. This would be followed by a short rock back in my chair and a glance at the heavens in gratitude when it jumped to 3% complete. To my family walking by and checking on me (over the next few hours) it appeared I was sitting shiva for a deceased family member. It looked like any second I would break into a Hebrew chant imploring some sort of mitzvah from the Moses of Microsoft. This, in truth, was as likely as any of my computer skills making a difference.
I think I was taking it hard because my computer is one of the only things in our house which I can call mine. As any husband and father can understand sharing is a matter of everyday life. From sharing a sip or three from my bottle of pop to a favorite t-shirt being turned into a nightgown for a little girl, dads share most things. I don’t mind sharing, but it didn’t seem to go the other direction very often. Think about it. If my wife pilfers from my closet no one at the store will bat an eye. On the other hand, if I wear her new culottes and wedgies I will find myself embarrassing my family all the way back to colonial days on the Maury Povich Show. I have already embarrassed my wife because I just implied she has culottes and wedgies in her closet, which are about thirty years out of date (she does not).
After I tried the few things I knew how to do as my computer choked and gasped, I called my sister, who works on computers for a living, and got a prognosis from her. Then Seth, my technologically advanced friend, took a crack at it and declared it most likely a goner. My next step was something like organ donation. I took the computer (or in its present state, the very heavy rectangular Frisbee) to a computer whisperer to get some files and things removed like a liver and a kidney for the organ bank.
Alan, the computer psychic, was most encouraging. He went right to work dissecting and re-connecting the hard drive. As is the case with most guys good with computers he was an adept multi-tasker. He answered the phone as he was working with my computer cadaver and began to help another customer. At least I assume he was helping someone, because all the information he was spouting was as coherent to me as a group of sailors leaving a Shanghai waterfront bar at four in the morning. This is what was said: “Your IP address and your sonic wall may not be interfacing this could cause the little pixies who run the printer to declare war with the tiny hamsters in control of the power supply which usually means the Grand High Vizier of the Operating System gets ticked off and moves to the Bahamas,” or words to that effect. I could be wrong. My mind started to wander.