The Curse of IT!

The Curse of IT!

It was a Saturday night and he was at poker.

He always played poker on Saturday nights. She always used this time to get things done around the house or go shopping.

In fact, there were a million things she should be working on this Saturday night.

There was the unfinished jacket on her sewing machine. But if she were honest with herself, the enthusiasm for that had waned when she realized it wasn’t going to fit her and she’d have to… I don’t know… sell it? On E-bay maybe? Hmmmm.

Then there was the rug. It desperately needed vacuuming; again.

There was the DVD she’d rented because she really did want to watch it, just, you know, not tonight. It was a serious story and she was really in no mood for serious stories.

There were dishes. There were always dishes. Well, maybe she’d do the dishes. After all, she was just standing around waiting for the hot cocoa machine to finish making her drink. Hot chocolate was interesting because the old house was cold tonight and her hands were freezing and doing dishes was okay because it was a good excuse to hold her frozen hands under running hot water.

Shopping was out because she was cold, and it was even colder outside, so she didn’t want to leave the house. And besides, she was broke. So all options exhausted, it was safe to say she was bored.

This night she was restless in her own house. All her appliances, gizmos and gadgets held no interest for her, not even her books which she had plenty of because normally she loved to read.

Really though, it was no mystery why she was restless. It’s because IT! wasn’t at her beck and call. IT! which she rarely paid attention to. IT! on which she never used to waste an entire Saturday night. Well, okay. NEVER may be a little strong of a word. But she never spent the ENTIRE Saturday night on IT! In fact, she had a somewhat tenuous relationship it IT! because IT! tended to occupy a lot of his time. Not that she was jealous mind you; just annoyed. Sometimes. Not all the time.

But tonight, IT! was in the shop. IT! had contracted a virus and kept shutting down every time IT! was rebooted.

Darn computers! Darn internet! Darn hackers! Darn! Darn! Darn!

All she wanted was to log on and check her email and her E-bay accounts. After she’d done that she’d be able to go do something else.

Okay. That sounded bad. But seriously, she was not addicted to IT!. The only reason she spent so much time online at her job is because they were boring desk jobs. They required her to be on the computer all day.  Sometimes they even required her to be online!

So why was it so important to be online tonight? Well, a couple of her auctions were ending. She needed to see if anyone had bought anything. There would be invoices to be sent and …well, maybe that wasn’t so important. After all, it was a holiday weekend and the Post Office wouldn’t be open until Tuesday. But how would she know which items needed to go to the post office. And to whom they needed to be sent.

And besides, having surrendered to her boredom, she’d been trying to read and had just read something pretty cool and wanted to look up more info on…

The situation was completely frustrating.

“Well” she thought. “I can’t even work on my short story. No computer to type it on!”

She snapped her book shut and threw it on the coffee table. The one cat’s head jerked up at the sound, the other cat continued to sleep curled up next to her as if nothing had happened.

“I’m bored.” she informed the cat who was watching her. The cat stared a hole into her forehead for a minute more, obviously annoyed at the interruption in his nap. Blinking once, he tucked his nose back into the crook of his paw.

Choosing to ignore what was most certainly a catly admonishment, she thought some more about her predicament.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t have stuff she could or even should be doing! Well, okay, not the dishes anymore obviously, but there was all that other stuff. It’s just that she didn’t want to do any of those things. She wanted to go on the computer.

“I know what you’re thinking” she said to the sleeping cats who pretended to ignore her. “I am not addicted to the computer. I refuse to believe I’m addicted to that stupid computer!” Her mind immediately jumped back to what she could be doing on the computer.

“Oh my gosh! Isn’t this one of the first signs of addiction? You loose interest in anything else?” A feeling of dread washed over her. Her stomach clenched as she realized that she would be fine if she could only have five minutes. Just five minutes. A quick little “hit”.

“OH MY GOD!” she cried out loud, jumping to her feet. This got both cats attention. “I need a 12 step program, or, or an intervention at the very least!” she informed them. The one cat got up and left the room, apparently unimpressed with her problems.

“Except” she went on, oblivious of her dwindling audience, “Except that there is no 12-step program for Computer Addiction. Is there? Someone needs to make this problem known to the world! I should write about this! Send it to a magazine or something… except, I don’t have a computer…” she slumped back into the seat she’d abandoned moments earlier.

Her mind was buzzing with possibilities. The article could help millions realize that they were addicted. Then they could all work on bettering themselves. She needed to be able to type all this out. But without her computer, she was stuck. While she thought on the matter for a few moments more, she continued to ignore the nagging voice that had been struggling to be heard for quite some time now. This was the voice of reason. Apparently fed up with being ignored, it started shouting.  She continued to ignore the increasing loud voice from deep within her, so the voice resorted to name calling.

“Hey stupid!” it yelled.

“Look” she told the voice. “I’m well aware that you’re throwing a fit over in your corner, but I’m seriously trying to figure this out here. And don’t call me stupid!”

“Well,” the voice said indignantly. “I was trying to help, but if you’re going to take that attitude, forget it!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sure whatever you have to contribute will be a great help.” She was getting a little sarcastic. After all, she figured, if the voice of reason truly had anything important to say, he’d have said it by now.

“That’s the just the problem” the voice informed her, having heard her thoughts. “I’ve been trying to speak up, but you won’t listen.”

“Fine. I’m listening now. What would you like to say?” She’d never been known for her patience, and if she was going to develop a personality disorder at this point, it had better be willing to carry on intelligent conversation.

“I’m going to ignore that, since your level of intelligence hasn’t impressed anyone tonight.” the voice informed her, being able to hear all her internal thoughts. “Look, I’m going to be strait with you, so here’s the deal. You DO have computer addiction, but, you don’t need a 12-step program.”

“Well if I’m addicted, then who’s supposed to help me?” Addicted? Eeek.

“I will.” said the voice.

“Okay Grand Know-It-All. How should I cure my own addiction?” she was starting to get a little annoyed.

“Watch the tone. You’re right that you should be writing about this problem,”

“Okay, but how am I supposed to write about it? If you’ll recall, my computer is DEAD!” Her patience was completely gone. First she’s informed that she’s addicted because she wants to be on the computer writing, and now she’s being told that she should write about the fact that she wants to be on the computer. If she had a computer to be on to write about this, wouldn’t that contribute to her addiction? This was very confusing.

“I can’t believe you’re still stumped by this!” yelled the voice, once again reading her thoughts. “How did you ever graduate high school?”

“Hey!” she said, completely insulted.

“It’s called a pen and paper. They are what people used before computers were invented to turn their thoughts into the written word!” The voice was clearly getting sarcastic now. “You pick up a pen and you start writing on the paper. I promise you, your boredom will be cured in no time.”

“Yeah, I’m not stupid. I know how to use a pen and paper, but…”

“But what?”

“But my hand will cramp up if I write too much.”

“Awwwww. Poor baby! You shouldn’t have let your hand get out of shape. Now, suck it up and get to work.”

Having imparted those pearls of wisdom, the voice must have felt its job was done because it fell silent.

“Hello?” she said out loud, tentatively. Nothing.
Well, it did make sense. Why not get out a pen and paper and see how far she got with it. After all, there was still the boredom, lurking just inside the other room where it had retreated when reason showed up. She wasn’t in the mood any more to put up with him.

She picked up a pen and a notebook and set to work telling the world about computer addiction.

After about 30 minutes, her hand began to cramp as she had predicted. Her mind tried to wander and started saying that it was ready to watch the movie it had earlier rejected.

This lack of attention to a project convinced her that computers were destroying her attention span. She needed to include that in her article. Computers kill your attention span. After all, this was not something she had trouble with as child when she could work on a project for hours on end. Now though, look at the unfinished jacket and all the other projects that lay about only half done. Like that blanket she started crocheting. Only three quarters of the way though. This had definitely become an ongoing problem.

Instead of abandoning her efforts once again, she pushed on. In a couple of hours, she had a completed project. Sure, it wasn’t a masterpiece. And maybe no one would care about computer addiction, but it was a completed project.

In fact, it might be some of the best writing she’d done since before she started using computers. This could be the start of a whole new career. She could write all the time and become famous. She’d write all her stories by hand! Sure her hand hurt like heck. In fact, it was so cramped it didn’t want to uncurl its fingers. She didn’t mind though. She imagined this pain was a good pain. Like a runners pain. Okay, maybe not a runner’s pain. But still, a good, productive pain. And it would build up stamina over time. Yes, the spell of IT! had been broken!

“I’m still here” her voice of reason spoke up. “And while I admire your ambition, I don’t think you’re ready yet for the majors. This is the first story you’ve written in how long?”

“Look, I took your advice this time. That doesn’t mean you’ll always be right though. Maybe a change of career would be good for me. Maybe I could be happy in my job for a change.”

“And maybe you’d be poor.” The voice shot back unkindly. “Listen, I don’t want to squelch your ambitions, but novels take enough hard work without trying to do them by hand.”

“Fair enough. Maybe computer addiction isn’t such a bad thing after all. Now internet addiction… That’s a problem!”

The End