Technophobia: Origins

Did you ever wonder how someone quirky got to be that way? This is the story of one such beginning. One of mine. 1

Once upon a time, in the early 1990’s, my husband’s workplace was upgrading computers. We were excited we got to keep one of the outdated 8088’s. It had a green-gray screen with glowing green text, roughly 5 inches by 6 inches in size, mounted on the face of the “tower.” It would boot from a 5 ¼ inch floppy, and run simple programs from additional floppies. Our 10-year-old son took to it like a thirsty duck to water. His Dad introduced him to writing simple commands and programs, and he spent hours experimenting daily.2

As someone who made it through high school with a slide rule (unable to afford the newly marketed Texas Instruments handheld calculators that could do square roots, sine, cosine and some factoring), the living sci-fi of the computer age was intimidating. I lived in dread of inadvertently doing something WRONG and having the whole works emit resentful metallic smoke as it melted into a massive, pricey paperweight.3

With the coaxing of the family, I gradually learned to connect the power cord and keyboard, and flip the chunky red switch in the back to turn on the computer. I would even put in the boot disk, and flip down the lever to engage it, with someone there to assure me that I had the correct disk, right side up. 4

One afternoon my son and his sisters insisted that I should demonstrate all I had learned about computers, thus far. I tried to beg off, and protested that we should wait until Daddy got home. Their clamorous insistence rose to a higher pitch, and I caved in. As I went through my paces, it got much quieter. After a series of numbers and codes flashed by, the fluorescent green text read, “Press any key to continue.” I had often seen such screens from behind other family members’ shoulders.5

“What do I do now?” I asked. 6

“What does it say to do?” my son responded.7

“It says, ‘Press any key to continue.’”8

“Well, then, press any key!”9

“But which key? There are so many! Which is the Right One?”10

“Geez, Mom! It says “any key,” so press any key!”11

“But which one?”12

He rolled his eyes in total disgust and walked to the other side of the kitchen table. His sisters had wandered off to check cupboards for after-school snacks.13

I studied the keyboard. The keys I knew (in addition to typewriter keys) were Enter, and the emergency use of Control, Alt, Delete, and Escape. I chose Enter as being the least likely to get out of hand.14

“Do you think it would be okay to use Enter?”15

“MOM! It says ANY key!”16

Feeling a thrill of anticipation to venture where I had never gone before, I pressed the Enter key.17

The screen went blank.18

After a moment, a new message appeared. It said “Erasing hard drive…” I knew that was very, very bad. I yelped “Help!” simultaneously going for Escape. I pressed it repeatedly, but the message didn’t change.19

“Someone GET OVER HERE! RIGHT NOW! SOMETHING’S WRONG!” I started practically pounding Control, Alt, Delete with shaking fingers. No change…the letters weren’t really flashing, it was my eyes blinking rapidly, as my stomach clenched with nausea.20

“Quick! Unplug the thing!” I hollered. No one had even made it to my side of the table. In a sweat of agony, with a sense of time standing still, I looked up from the view screen with its message of doom to see my son sinking to the floor as his knees buckled with silent laughter. Tears were starting a slow trickle over freckles made almost invisible by their flaming pink background. His sisters had the ill grace to join in, only louder.21

I had been had. Big time.22

The temptation to strangle my firstborn male offspring competed with a desire to limply kneel in prayers of gratitude that I had not destroyed this machine we couldn’t afford to replace. 23

When he was able to speak again, he told me with considerable pride that he had programmed the disk with 20 random messages, one of which would display after the machine booted. Things like, “Your refrigerator is running” and “Eww, gross!” On my first try, I had lucked across his brilliant “Deleting hard drive…” He was immensely pleased, both with the success of his project and the superb performance I had delivered.24

Needless to say, I would not touch the computer for months after that. 25

“Put your cajoling in your sock, kids, ‘cause it ain’t happenin'!”26

The End27

I still feel my way slowly with technology, wishing for a magic stick to test for electronic quicksand...28