The Journey of a Technophobe

Once upon a time I was scared to death of computers. Way back in the 80s, when the shoulder pads were big and the hair was bigger my school began requiring students to have a class in computers in order to graduate. Mind you, young uns who have never known anything but the various incarnations of Windows, we had to type in actual commands to get actual results. I viewed this as significantly less desirable than using a hammer and chisel to make the images I desired appear on the screen before me. All those C prompts and crap looked like abstract things with no bearing on reality, much like algebra and trigonometry, which also escaped my ability to reason.

Random strings of symbols and numbers and letters marching across my screen drove me out of my mind. What was wrong with a good old electric typewriter? Yes, I had conceded an electric typewriter was a darned nice thing to have so as to not require serious bashing from fingers on an old manual model and the resultant hand cramping. Given that option I'd prefer the quill and inkwell, thank you very much. My preferences were not considered in the least by my school administrators though and thus I growled and harumphed my way through the required computing course. I would feel pity for the teacher who was cursed by my dark countenance day after day but he delighted in enhancing my irritation. The more annoyed I became the more amusing he found it. In spite of it all I did like the guy. I just hated the freaking computer.

Then it was on to college as an education major. Again, I was a member of the first class required to have computer training. Again, I was less than enthused. Again I let my unhappiness over this requirement be known. By the time I took the class I already knew my goal was to go overseas and use my teaching skills among folks like you've read about in the recent Trini Tuesday posts. I let the prof know it was the height of stupidity that I had to take this sort of class. In the Third World I'd be lucky to have a blackboard and textbooks. Computers were not going to serve me out in some hut in Africa. I wouldn't even have electricity! He listened to my rant, smiling smugly. When I finished he just said, "It's even more important for you to have training than the others in class so you can be more equipped to provide a good education to your intended students." I cocked my head like a confused puppy and knew he'd taken too big a sip on the Kool-Aid.

When my kids were little and large segments of the population already had PCs in their homes I continued my resistance. I was proud of my lack of computer. Like a hapless red shirt facing the Borg in a Star Trek episode though, resistance was futile. Eventually, I was worn down in my lone stand and we acquired a Mac. I admit I warmed to it when I realized the joy of not needing white-out. I am the Queen of Typos so I went through it at a fairly alarming rate...when I typed...because I generally tried to avoid it...because I needed a lot of white-out. Word processing was a pretty groovy little trick after all. Oh, and I didn't mind playing Solitaire without using the bent up deck of cards with the 8 of diamonds that was missing. Minesweeper was kinda cool too. On this Mac we had an email only (no surfing the net) account and I found I quite liked being able to keep in contact with friends so easily.

I was still absolutely refusing to have anything to do with the Internet though. There were all sorts of weirdos out there on the World Wide Web and what was I going to find there that I couldn't find in the local library? Eventually Mr. Lime wore me down stating that the students at his school found it increasingly necessary to have Internet access for the sake of doing their schoolwork. Fully in touch with my inner curmudgeon, I acquiesced while grumbling about how when I was in school we knew how to use a library and card catalog and actual books and what sort of excessive nonsense this Internet in the home was.

So we got a newer computer and full Internet access and dontcha know there was some pretty neato stuff on that there interwebs thingy. I could find information faster than driving down to the library, which I noticed now had its own computers with Internet access. Hhhm, fancy that. Oooh, and I could read the newspaper from Trinidad. How cool is that? And I could talk to people in chat rooms. Ew, not those kind of chat rooms. There were trivia chat rooms where all sorts of other nerdy people who read the encyclopedia for entertainment would get together to challenge each other with obscure questions about every topic. I mean these people were as nerdy, even nerdier, than I was. They even told me the difference between a nerd and a geek.

Unfortunately, the trivia rooms eventually became overrun by some less evolved lifeforms who called themselves sexxybeyotch16, who had a webcam and wasn't afraid to use it or pradeep, who would send lame IMs to every female in the room or the anonymous cowards, who used to pick fights and spew bile from behind the safety of their monitors. The civilized nerds retreated into blogdom and dragged me somewhat reluctantly. This blogging thing, I dunno, it seems kinda complicated. I don't know if I can manage this sort of thing. What the heck would I have to say and really, who is going to read it anyway?

Yeah, you all know how that turned out. Assimilation complete.

(I'm not advanced enough to do the photoshopping. An old trivia/blog pa, BSoholic did this a long time ago.)

All that said, here's an Eddie Izzard bit on technology that rang pretty true.