Once upon a time in the land of text and tweets there lived an old fashioned girl who tried very hard to navigate through her modern world filled with all manner of technological wonders. It seemed that as soon as she timidly mastered one thing the next newest, faster, better thing would come along and require her to be at its mercy until she mastered it also. She learned as much as she felt she needed to know and let it go at that. She failed to marvel over apps, swishy screens, and such things. Faster did not equate with better in her mind. She longed for the days when getting a new notebook meant actual paper and a stylus was then her favorite brand of ink pen.
Antiquated as she was in her thinking she knew she would have to embrace the technological race. With great trepidation she did just that. She learned how to tap out a line or two on the virtual paper screen, not liking the font that looked nothing like her looping handwriting, all the while missing the feel of her hand gliding across the smooth cool paper. Her fingers sometimes got clumsy and clacked the wrong keys and words were garbled and glaringly underlined in red from the tough task master, Professor Spellchecker.
She did not always understand where things went or where they were stored since there was no actual filing cabinet to rifle through until the necessary document was found. Equally perplexing were they terms of gigs and bites, rams and roms, lists of .coms, and the whole host of abc's that she heard bandied about in excited chatter among those in the know. It was as if she were hearing what amounted to a foreign language that she could not comprehend. In spite of all her lack of knowledge and skill she managed enough to get by until one day her notebook malfunctioned.
Now an old fashioned notebook of the paper variety is an easy fix, tear out a messed up page and begin again or simply pop into your favorite paperie and get an inexpensive replacement. Neither of these options were available to the old fashioned damsel in distress. She suspected something serious when her notebook began to run a fever getting hot to the touch so she trotted off to the Technology Tincture Shoppe and bought it a cooling pad with a little fan what whirled quietly keeping its core temperature under control. Crisis averted!
Everything was fine for a while until one day the poor little notebook began to have panic attacks and freeze right up. It was as if it could not process the data being thrown at it, boy could she relate to that! This required seeing a specialist, the Geek Squad with their white lab coats and horn rimmed glasses descended, they poked and prodded, scratched their heads and said it was a mysterious illness, to call them in if it should happen again. It did, they came, its still a mystery.
Then the pad that once allowed a gentle glide of a finger to wheedle untold amounts of control through points and clicks began to halt and stutter or refuse to move at all. Its pad had plum wore out from being pressed so much and pad replacement surgery was quite expensive without the proper plan of insurance, the policy of which had expired for such an aged machine.
To top matters off the little notebooks ability to reach had suddenly become impaired, it could no longer use technology telepathy to communicate with its companion printer in the other room, they had to be tethered with a cord in order to share commands. It could travel no more than 12 feet from its wireless command center without losing its world wide searching abilities. It had been rendered immobile by its inability to sustain a battery life. Despite all its flaws, the old fashioned girl had remained loyal to her new kind of notebook until the frustration level mounted at its inability to obey her commands. It was with great sadness that she closed it for the last time.
Off to the electronic adoption center she went wheer all kinds of hopefuls flashed their screens at her, glowing keys winked, colorful apps flashed, some screens swished, speakers tuned their voices to vie for her attention. There were big ones, little ones, and just right in between ones. Ones that sat on desks, ones that rested in laps, and ones that cradled in hands or ones that stood on stands. It was like walking into a Dr. Seuss rhyme. A nice young man with a mega watt smile said he could find one that was just her style.
She looked around him hopefully seeing if there were real paper and pen but was met with nothing but that mega watt grin. Resigned to the task at hand she allowed him lead her through technology land. He poked and he pushed at the keys with glee then he swished across screens magically. With the flare of peddler selling his wares he bamboozled her into buying one of technologies new heirs with eight windows and a swishy new screen plus speakers that could sing like anything. Home she came with it tucked in a box, kicking off shoes and propping up feet in socks. She nestled her aged notebook in her lap and for one last and final time began to tap..."A Tale of Technology ".....
P.S. Why are there no photos on this post you may ask, because I have not learned how to do this task! I'll be back on the virtual screen as soon as I master this new technology fiend!
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