I have a relationship with my computer. 

Sure, sometimes we argue.   Well, at least I argue.  The computer is more passive aggressive and just sits there without really saying anything but you know at some point in the future, it will have its revenge.

The computer is usually my vessel.  It responds to my needs and I have to admit to feeling a little thrill every time I press enter.   And most of the time it is there for me.  I mean when I download a file, most of the time it just zips through and appears on screen and I want to give the computer a treat but am not sure how.  Nor I am sure the computer will notice.  Like I say, passive-aggressive.

There are days though when I feel computer’s displeasure.  No matter what I do or what button I push, the message comes back loud and clear: “You have committed a fatal error.”  I don’t know about you but this message makes me nervous.  I keep telling the computer this and asking it to cut it out, I don’t respond well to threats, but does it listen?  Not at all.  No, it just gets all mad and like closes down completely and won’t tell me what I did wrong.   Are you getting the picture about the passive-aggressive thing now?

Then there are the days when the computer tries to tease me.   It slows down its loading time and tries to make me beg for it.  “Come on baby, load,” I say but the computer, like a stripper in a night club, just won’t let me see it all.   Slowly, the picture starts to take shape or the loading bar inches across the bottom of the screen dragging it out, keeping me in suspense.  Will it load, won’t it load, wait I can almost see the opening page and…Damn!  “You have committed a fatal error and I have to close.”  

What really gets me though is when the computer seems to be acting nice and compliant, doing my every bidding.  I have typed the text, I have inserted the tables and the images and then I press save.   Slowly, slowly drawing out the whole process the computer pretends to try to save my file.  I know right away though that is just an act.   The computer has no real intention of letting me save this file.  It was all pretense and then sure enough the message comes on screen, “Fatal error, I have to close.”  Then the screen goes blank and inevitably, all that work is lost.

This is when I really let the computer have it.  I rant.  I rave.  I threaten to rip out its hard drive.  But does it react?   Not at all.   It just sits there on the desk with a blank look on its face as if it had not just ruined my whole day.  

And when I reboot, it comes on blissfully innocent and pretends to have forgotten completely about what it just did.   I retype my file, redo all the work and press save.   And just to keep me guessing, sometimes it saves my file and sometimes it doesn’t.

And after I have saved my file, I am suspicious so I try to e-mail myself the file I just produced but the computer is one step ahead of me and won’t let me open my outlook.  What to do?  Aha!  I send my file to the printer so I will at least have a hard copy.  But computer can sometimes be ornery so sometimes, I get the message that there is no network connection to the printer, so then I try to close the file and save it and guess what I get.  “Fatal error, Computer must close.”  

So, just to be on the safe side, I am not typing this on my regular computer.   We have a relationship and I’ll be damned if I do anything to upset it.