My first computer was purchased while I was at the university for the use of the counseling center. That had to be in the early ‘80s. I was dragged into the computer age almost kicking and screaming in my usual resistance to change. Of course, when I learned the convenience it provided, I grudgingly used it and when I left the university in 1985, I bought my own. It was the size of a suitcase and was called a portable. It contained its own printer and I used it in my private practice to print out test results and write letters. Its “portability” was limited to if somebody else carried it, but it served me pretty well for my five years of private practice.
It used a large size floppy disc, and after a while it was obviously time for me to buy a new computer. That meant learning another system, but I managed it with new programs, Quarto for writing and Quicken for spreadsheets – very satisfying.
I treated computers as I did automobiles. I never cared what made them run or how they were made, just so when I turned the key they ran. My first husband disliked the computer because I paid more attention to it than I did to him. He had employees for that scutwork, but my second husband (before he was my husband, he was my major professor and co-author of our publish-or-perish research and publications) pushed me into keeping up with the Bill Gateses and Stephen Jobses of this new world. To me, keeping up was a new computer until the software stopped working on that model. Whenever I had trouble, he would carry the computer over to the repairman, who fixed it or sent him home with a new one.
After he died, I relied on my son for carrying and getting repairs. I had begun writing this column by then, and I had been keeping my finances on the computer, so it had become an essential part of life, and it remains so. But it was getting slower and slower and everyone said I needed a new one. A new one would have to have a disc drive for my floppies containing all my tax records for years. I would put up with creeping pace, but I wouldn’t regenerate all that data.
Fortunately for me, David’s step-daughter Jessica has returned to Lexington. She is a computer whiz and between him and her, I now have a new computer set up. They selected it, brought it in and made it work. Those jokes people my age tell about having to have a teenager show them how to use any new appliance are based on fact. I’m very lucky – David knows a good deal about computers and Jessie knows a whole lot (much more than a good deal). After a lot of their time and caring I’m up and running.
It only took me a day and a half to learn as much as where I was when the old computer slowed up to the point of expiration. With any luck, this one will last until I can’t write any more and some one else is keeping my records for me.
I’m aware that new learning is deemed essential for keeping the brain flexible and functioning – this qualifies as new learning, I hope. All that exercise I’m doing three times a week may keep me mobile. If it doesn’t, I’m going to send messages from the other world, suggesting that the people who are left sit around a lot and listen to politicians. That will make their lives so unpleasant they won’t mind dying.