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The Newsletter >
Techno Boobs
August 31, 2008
Dear Subscribers,
“And it’s going to work every single time, right?” I said
with heavy irony, a touch of despair, and hoping that I
would not be praying for death when it was over.
My Comp II teacher, Ms. Koopmann, replied, “Yes, yes, of
course, every time.” She smiled with a confidence that I
did not trust or understand.
Ms. Koopmann is my college teacher. She teaches Creative
Writing and Comp II (a class I have already taken but in
another state and with another name and another magic
computer number, therefore the computer in Florida does not
recognize my perfectly fine efforts, and I am having to
take it over. It’s take the class over . . . or, hire a
private detective to locate my former Comp II professor in
North Carolina, obtain a letter stating that I did in fact
take Comp II, stayed conscious for the class, and did not
argue unduly with the professor.) Ahhh, technology.
Since North Carolina, the world has gone green and all
written submissions, quizzes, and tests are on-line—as in
by computer, through the ether, over the Internet (invented
by Al Gore.) My question was intended to receive verbally
the reassurance from my teacher that the whole techno-mess
would, in fact, work as promised.
It didn’t.
Halfway through my first timed computer quiz, my chubby
husband of thirty years (some of those years were
pre-computer) rolled over in bed onto my computer mouse
causing a strange, unrelated “window” to pop up.
Okay, I was taking my first computer quiz in pajamas, in
bed, with snacks—close at hand.
I closed the window. The computer quiz gods decided that
I was A) dead B) cheating or C) descending the stairs like
a goddess (that’s a quote from the reading I was being
quizzed on, and that’s why that’s funny.) The quiz gods
“locked down” my quiz taking. I choked on a pork rind.
“Sherwood, you just blew my first quiz.” I clicked on
boxes, windows, and pictures of a padlock. “AND I KNEW ALL
THE ANSWERS.”
“Urrrrrrghabloooooolig,” he said, squashing my bag of
Bar-B-Que pork rinds.
“Wake up, man. I have eleven minutes to figure this out.”
I clicked and cursed. The clock ticked down. “Ugh, I have
ten minutes.”
“Whaaaaaaat?”
“I HAVE EIGHT MINUTES.” I clicked madly. “You rolled over
my test, and oddly enough when I asked the Help Desk what
to do when a chubby husband rolls over your mouse causing
the, Do you want this document translated into Mandarin?
option to pop up, THERE WAS NO ANSWER.”
He fumbled for his glasses. The clock ticked on and on. I
balled up my fist, shook it at the sky, and cursed the
computer quiz gods.
“Sherwood, I’m doomed and damned.” The clock ticked down
and a cartoon bomb exploded when my twenty minutes had
expired. A cold hard lump formed in my throat, nostrils,
and sphincter. Parts of me cramped up. I emailed my teacher
to explain my quiz taking failure. Her email “came back”
with the computer explanation “no such human being on
earth.”
I have begun to pray for death.
Linda (Computers are the devil’s workshop!) Zern
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