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.

    Half way 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 god “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. 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