I love you - but take your hands off my computer.
I suppose that until everybody has his or her own computer we can't really and
truly call them personal computers. At our house, for instance, we have
only one, making it, perhaps by definition, a family computer. If everybody
is home and I want to use it, I have to make sure that everybody else has some
other activity with which they can be occupied - homework, perhaps, or more probably
television. The kids may be convinced that they need the machine more than I do,
but being bigger and older, and being able to prove that the computer is directly
connected to making a living, gives me first dibs. But it's not only that I almost
always have some sort of work to do that demands that I have the computer available
for me. It's also the fear that something might go wrong while the kids are using
it. On a
blog I chanced upon (okay, it's never really chance) the blogger wrote about
a visit from her younger sister that her parents coerced her into receiving. As
she listed the issues around which she seemed to have nothing in common with her
sister, she also commented:
You can break my favourite dishes, you can throw your clothes on the floor, leave your empty food container on the coffee table, drink out of the carton, spill red wine on the white carpet, and put your shoes on my sofa - I will not bat an eye. When you mess with my computer, it's personal. It's enraging. It is the only bit of my life that is neatly organized and devoid of clutter. My computer is my castle.
When I was a teenager boys used to ask their fathers for the keys to the car,
and their fathers would only hesitatingly hand them over, fearful that it would
get bumped or scratched. My kids are still too young to drive, but if I'm not
careful they can do a great deal of damage to the files on our computer.
Go to: Fort PC.