I remember how excited we were at work to get our first word processor. It took up as much room as a small freezer.
Like most of you, I’m from that awkward generation: in the middle between people who grew up without computers and those whose thumbs are starting to change shape to accommodate texting. At 55 I'm just starting to use Facebook. Could anything be more precious?
I remember how excited we were at work to get our first word processor, a Xerox 860. We even hired a carpenter to build a special cabinet for it, to protect it from dust! It took up as much room as a small freezer. We were so in awe of it, I’m surprised we didn’t genuflect as we passed the thing.
My first office computer was an Apple IIe. This was before Windows, when everything was DOS. Do you know what DOS is? You know when you restart your computer after it crashes there’s a black screen with white letters and a blinking cursor, and you can only use the arrow and “Enter” keys to navigate because your mouse doesn’t work? That’s pretty much DOS. Try writing disciplinary memoranda on that sucker.
I’ve come a long way. Lately I’m at More.com and Facebook, and I have my own website which I created and edit myself using software called Dreamweaver. (Can anybody help me with Dreamweaver? Please?)
I only started using Facebook a few days ago and already I’m frustrated that my old friends from work who are now retired aren’t on it. These are people I cared about but didn’t stay in touch with. (They should try More.com. Same idea, but easier to use.) Every hour or so I think of somebody else with whom I shared those old days of IBM Selectrics and I wish they would start a Facebook page so I could communicate with them, but a lot of these people in my demographic don’t even have their own email (they share it with their husbands and have cute names like Two4theRoad@BigFatRV.com). Or they’re still working and they get their email through the corporate server, and they like it that way. Too damn much email anyway. Don’t want to have to check it on the weekends.
