Hard Drive Crashes

Back in the early '80's, the Lone Star state opted to create for its citizens, an experiment using teenagers. They devised the "Hardship License." The term "hardship" meant any teen going to high school where the parents agreed to let the youth learn to drive. I was one of those test drivers of this policy, and am probably the reason why airbags were invented, not to mention the experiment, dismissed. It may have been because I was a dreamy teenager, it may have been because on occasion (not always, not as often as one might imagine), I wore my toe shoes or Jazz shoes so as to cut down on the time needed to get to dance class ready. 

But it doesn't matter why I was a bad driver; the reality is that poor little Dodge Dasher never stood a chance. Within three years, I'd hit rear ended a vehicle, (I sneezed, hit the gas and when whamo), sideswiped a motor cycle after getting lost in the rain, and floated my car down a street. The judgment and driving skills of this one's teen brain were poor.

Once I turned 18, apparently my brain, my judgement and my driving skills matured sufficiently that this stopped being a constant threat. Maybe the fact I quit dancing classes at that point had a part in it as well. Still, within me lay the capacity for casual distracted destruction. It merely channeled it's power toward a different machine.

When I turned 41, my husband bought me a laptop, not realizing that hard drives and crashes were part of my nature. The first computer survived three years with me before succumbing to the injuries of a virus. The computer sneezed, and stopped going rather like my first car. The second computer, not as strong, got lost at the tender age of two when I took it with me out into the world and it slid from my bag in the car after a hard stop to avoid a motorcycle that cut in front of me. Better the computer than the biker but still.

All that remained was to have the third machine float down the street. This past week, I'd put the computer on my night stand because I wanted it out of the main room so the kids wouldn't damage it after I'd finished working. I plugged it in so it could recharge. I turned to walk away but my left shoelace was untied. Somehow the lace looped around the cord of the charger so when I took a step, it pulled the cord with my foot and down down down, the two and a half feet to the ground it went, landing first on a corner before my hands could cushion it's final descent to the floor. I muffed the potential save, and the Geek Squad pronounced it DOA.

I'm thinking the government needs to do something to protect the computers and the public from threats like me, perhaps create airbags for laptops or require a licensing agreement test before letting people walk about with machines that fry on contact with anything harder than a cushion. Make us go through a "your computer and you" sort of course before letting us or at least me, on the internet. Training wheels might be nice too.

Picking up the external hard drive of my former computer, I noticed my shoelaces were again untied and now vow to at the very least, be preventative toward whatever other pieces of technology I ever own. My next pair of shoes will be velcro strap.