Kevin Michael Grace, Take My Computer, Please

Take My Computer, Please

My marriage collapsed January 30. It was sudden and complete. I fought hard to save it and did all the things one expects of rejected men. I begged, pleaded and cajoled. I sulked, raged and sought refuge in drink. I became an object of pity by asking my friends the same question my partner refused to answer: Why am I the only one trying to save this relationship?

My marriage collapsed January 30 when I installed Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system. I divorced and remarried February 24 when I bought a new computer. Oh, a computer, you say. Haven’t you over-egged the pudding? What a pathetic fallacy.

Computers are merely metal boxes filled with chips and boards and wires. Computers are cold and rational, not at all like women. Computers are our servants.

No, they are not. They have become our mechanical brides. Having lived half a century, I remember a world before computers. As a writer, I remember when people looked things up in books and scribbled their compositions on paper or bashed them out on typewriters. But that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead.