|
To say that I am in any way
good on a computer is to also believe that pigs can fly. I am almost
as afraid of it today as I was when I first sat down in front of
one. I have always felt that Bill Gates personally set little traps
for me all along the way to the internet and back.
I remember when I first went into the store to buy my first
computer. I told the young man to imagine Thor coming into the store
carrying his club and grunting, “Thor want computer”! I think I have
come a long way from that day, but still feel like I am a rank
amateur at the whole computer thing.
I had a desk top for a long time. My son in law took my old one home
one weekend and rebuilt it to include upgrades and then took me out
to show me all the new screens that didn’t take up two desks tops in
depth.
Soon I was writing On My Duff without first using up a half a pad of
legal paper and found out how to switch out paragraphs and half way
edit my mistakes. I enjoyed that old machine and miss it
considerably at times.
A couple of years ago my wife started to talk about getting a lap
top and so I bought her one. It was great. I didn’t have to worry
about switching users on the old desk top and whether I would, by
mistake, erase something she was saving or needed for her job.
Last year she started telling me what we needed was to get rid of
that slow behemoth that was taking up so much room and for me to get
a new laptop. It takes up very little space and would do so much
more. So for Christmas last year, she bought me this new machine
with so many bells and whistles I hardly know where to pull or what
to blow.
It wasn’t that hard to get up to speed as far as programming was
concerned, but then there was that little built in mouse at the
bottom of the machine. I was having so much trouble with that thing.
I would write three quarters of a page and it would just disappear
and I would have to start all over again. I would be working a
sudoku puzzle and it would suddenly enlarge until I could only see
half the puzzle. Soon I went out and got me a hand operated mouse
and I cut up an old mouse pad to cover the built in mouse.
One Sunday I mentioned this to my daughter in law and she said, “
why don’t you use your undo button?” I said, “what’s that?” and she
proceeded to explain to me the undo button and all its applications.
I tried that and wow was I amazed. My major flubs were now just oops
along the way. In my opinion this was the greatest thing to come
along since the pencil with an eraser on the end.
Then it hit me. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had an undo button we
could hit if and when we did something in our life that we rued the
day and moment it happened. I told my daughter in law I just had to
use this as the basis for On My Duff.
We have all had those times and situations when we wished we could
push an undo button and make things as if they never occurred. How
often have we done something or said something and wished we could
undo it? How many life changing situation could we have undone or
changed our life course?
So if you could hit your undo button, how far back would you go? How
many things would you undo and restart your life over again? I have
given this a lot of thought and I would like to go all the way back
to my teenage years. Yep, and knowing what I know now the first
thing I am going to do is go over to my aunt’s house and brothers or
no brothers, I am going to punch my cousin Marjorie right in the
nose because that is when all my troubles started. Then, if her
brothers let me live, I will go down to the Snack Shack, see if I
can come up with seven cents, and have a Pepsi. |
