Tao of Scott

Hi Nichole,

Well I’m back at it.

So I was showing Kathy how I couldn’t get my “cut”, “copy”, and “paste” functions to work in my “Works” program.

She says “here let me try, I think I might be able to help.”
I say “just tell me what to do and I will do it.”

She reaches in towards my keyboard. I slap her hand and screech “WHAT ARE YOU DOING.” (reference: Crispin Glover as Uncle Del explaining to his mother that he is “making his lunch” in the film Wild at Heart).

She reaches in again “please, I might be able to figure this out.”
I slap her hand vigorously “JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO AND I WILL DO IT.”

She reaches.
I slap.
Reaches.
Slap.
Reaches, slap, reaches, slap, reaches, slap, both reaching, both slapping, each with both hands, four hands slapping, she explaining that she just wants to assist me, me screaming at her to leave my computer alone, that she will wreck everything and I will have to redo hours of work. This whole affair looks and sounds like a gaggle of birds fighting over a single nesting place. An amazing bluster of squawking, wing flailing, and feathers flying. It’s over as fast as it began, just like the birds. Kathy stands with her lightly battered hands at her side and upon my now calmly stated instructions begins to, in a steady voice and soothing tone, suggest some possible approaches to solving the problem I am having with the machine. None of these work.

Fuck, I’m a fifty seven year old man with the will to work and a perfectly fine mind (I delude myself) now rendered pointless by a rapidly evolving technology which has no need for, and therefore places no value on, a single skill which I currently possess. Those of us raised in the last death throws of the industrial age witnessed our fathers coming home from either their blue work shirt or their suite and tie jobs, driving an extraordinarily huge automobile made by one of the big three or Studebaker or De Soto, kissing the wife, doling out the appropriate spankings to the appropriate children, changing into something comfortable, taking their rightful position in the recliner, highball in one hand, cigarette or pipe in the other and watching Walter Cronkite on the TV. No further work would be accomplished nor even attempted on this day. Hell, even the TV only had three network stations and one or maybe two local stations. No complicated decisions as to what to watch so no real work there. No dad was taking continuing education classes in anything. No dad was wearily hammering out some project designed to make somebody other than himself rich until the wee hours of the morning. “Honey, when are you coming to bed” answered by “in a bit goddamnit, I have to get this project completed by 7:00 tomorrow morning, fuck!” was never heard in the households of yore. You went to trade school, high school, or college, went to work five sometimes six days a week, never learned one new thing, retired at about sixty five years old after which your health declined rapidly and you died. There, that was the deal and when we grew up that would still be the deal. This was the world we prepared for.

Then the computer, the first of which was as big as a gas station, appeared in the news and the language. The computer, it was promised, would cut the standard forty hour work week to thirty hours because you would be able to work so much more quickly and efficiently. The naivete was blinding. “No you fucking numbnuts, sit your lazy ass back down. You don’t get to do your same old work load faster and then go home to the wife and kids earlier, you get to do more work than ever in your forty hours. Hell, if we can think of way to shrink these things you could take ’em home and work twenty-four seven. Now that’s an idea”, was now heard throughout the land.

Chris came over earlier today and watched me work on the machine for a couple of minutes. The experience for him was so painful that I could hear his teeth begin to loosen. He said “hey, I can barely read this shit do you want me to show you how to make the letters bigger?” at which point he shoved me out of my chair (he was a college football player, had I gone to college I would have been a skinny acid head. As it was I was just a skinny acid head), took total control of the computer and started to make gestures like he was going to touch the keyboard or something. “GODDAMMIT CHRIS WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, DON’T…, GET YOUR HANDS…, I HAVE’NT SAVED THAT YET, YOU’LL LOSE IT, STOP, FUCK” I bellowed.

Chris replied “Jesus man take pill.”

“Hmmm” I thought.

“See look everything’s fine and now you can read this bilge. Man, I thought I was the stupidest motherfucker in the known universe, turns out you are. Well good luck, adios”.

Love, dad