What's more dangerous, the real world, or the computer-generated one?

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils

(Today I’m going to share with you something that adults – especially the ones with “hoar-covered roofs” – don’t share with those who are younger. Don’t tell anybody, but… Grownups. Have. Meltdowns! (The following is a reaction from earlier in the spring when I replaced my Samsung computer, loaded with 8.5, with a brand new one.)

My mouth is set. Those fluffy dark clouds are rolling around over my head like in a Charlie Brown comic strip, and I audibly cussed. "What the hell is OS? I don't know what OS is!!!! I'm sick – and tired – of this mess, this ‘electronbalese’! Use ENGLISH!”

My Dell speaks to me in a foreign tongue… but maybe I shouldn’t blame it on the computer; maybe it’s that durn Windows 10. Even the haughty designation, that standoffish, “Windows 10” designation gets my goat. I can see that face all haughty, stretched down chinward as if a foul smell envelops the area. I didn’t purchase this contraption to spend my life looking for stuff. Age already has that covered!

Where the H are the windows? Is he (Please say it isn’t “she,” and chip away at the fleeting faith I have in my gender as we abandon Venus and soar closer and closer to “Mars”…) calling that little white block with the intersecting lines, that little square thing, the little cube in the corner a window?

For heaven’s sake, that’s no window! That looks more like a generic gift wrapped in white with a string around it – maybe a box of stuff not needed this season and thus stored in the attic for a different time. Whatever it is, I’d be happy to let it stay up there! Come to think of it, who but a nut would place a window down in the corner – on the floor, really – and tell folks to “click” on it for information. Are we s’pose to believe it’s gonna open up and make our lives better? The only thing I want to see perched outside my window is a bevy of beautiful feathered friends. If I have to crawl on the floor to peek outside, I’m in a very scary neighborhood. It’s time to make myself scarce!

I (sometimes) follow directions, so I tap the durn thing, and whaddya think happens? More directions: “Type here to search. ” To search for what? A rainbow? And if a rainbow, will there be a pot of gold at the end? I’m not gonna be tricked by that, wandering around a keyboard like folks searching for Pokemon? I don’t need to tell you that that ended badly for lots of people. Makes you wonder: What’s more dangerous, the real world, or the computer-generated one?

Well, I’ve had this contraption, about three months, and I’m still not happy! I want a divorce. The tenth window – I guess you could call it the half landing, you know, the space between floors, where you turn and grab a different banister so you don’t go tumbling back down to the first floor – still isn’t where I want to spend my life. However, I can’t afford it. Anyway, what would come next – Windows 11, 12, 14, or some other number skyward – would likely be just as condescending!

Where’s my quill and… Dang! Who knocked over my ink well?

Story Posted:08/26/2017