[Miscellany]

I'm the IT department's worst nightmare.

Judging a book by its cover you'd have to say I treat my lap top badly and I wouldn't disagree with that assessment either - but it's not the whole story. There are crumbs all over the thing and under the keys - sometimes they make little crunching sounds as I type - and I admit I've had a wine spillage or three on there. The monitor always has dust all over it, or if not dust then it's finger prints from where I point to the offending God of the CPU and curse or maybe even lip stain from where I've kissed it. The keyboard well okay - even I am a little ashamed of - the N has totally disappeared and in it's place are 5 slasher looking indents from where my fingernail has dug right into the keys. The two tips of the M peaks are the only part that still remain of that letter - while the S is half there, and half not. The G is starting to wear away. The H looks like an I and the E like a very high hyphen like it's trying to abdicate from the key. The A is simply a quirky looking diagonal line. And the L - well if you weren't versed in QWERTY then you'd have no idea what it was. K is fuzzy - C is hazy - O is more like a C than the C itself is and then there's V - who know WHAT it's trying to be? The right hand shift said hift - though it really should say shi t.

I use the laptop constantly. It's with me all day at work, I use it to type all my reports and do my planning (okay pretend to do my planning), or send various emails. I watch countless movies and television shows that won't play in my conventional DVD player on it - like The Kill Point and Weeds, Greek, Dexter, Hells Kitchen, Project Runway, The IT Crowd and other shows I've fallen in love with and we don't get here on commercial television. It's my first port of call in looking up addresses and phone numbers, names and other information. It's the first place I go when I feel like I've got something to say. I've fallen asleep on this thing, and woken up with the imprint of little square key shapes on my cheek - I've cried in front of it - laughed merrily at the many stories I've read on it - marveled at photos I've downloaded onto it - been happy, sad, frustrated, angry and impassioned by words written on it and felt it connected me to many friends who have been there when the chips have been well and truly down (thank you).

I may very well have tap-dancing fingers and eat while using it and curse while pointing right at the monitor and refuse to restart it using the conventional way - which is MUCH too slow mind you (Surely it's not JUST and on button is it?) but there's a reason. The shaking of IT department heads that goes on about me is not wrong, but they're not right either. It would be wrong to say that I treat my laptop badly and leave it at that. No. It's well loved, this thing. Like a teddy bear with half its fur rubbed off. Those are the best toys, don't you think? - They're the ones that looked disheveled because they've been loved and used so much.

I spied the laptop of a fellow teacher the other day - pristine and shiny it was. I was in a bind and had to borrow it but was left cold because it had none of the personality of mine. I could tell she had never reached forward and kissed the monitor, or the keypad when something really good came up on screen. And I know you guys are sitting there thinking what kind of idiot does that, ANY of that? but all I could think was God, this person must be some kind of boring.

Labels: rough treatment of inanimate objects, TV

posted by M at 12:11 am 18 comments