Words to use: All I Wanted, force, cobweb
All I wanted was peace and quiet. Solitude of the highest sort. The force of life had dragged me past sleep, into a dreamy state I had not visited in a long, long, time. I wanted to remain there. I concentrated on the hum of my ancient refrigerator, and tried to block out the rest. The synergistic stresses of life had covered me in a cobweb of negativity, and I need to escape this evil web. The refrigerator stopped humming, and I descended into a deep sleep — for a minute, until the phone rang. I foolishly signed up for information about online courses one day. Lack of impulse control? Pretty pictures? Who knows?
But I clicked on it, and I was paying for it. “How dare they disturb me!” It was time to contact the Federal Trade Commission so these semi-automated messages would stop. There must be an incredible sales commission involved, or these recruiters would not be so persistent.
Wait! What’s this? They’ve redesigned the FTC Complaint Assistant!
Let me see, does this complaint involve identity theft? Well, I did fill out a form, so they have my personal information. I guess it could be in that category. OK. No, I better change that.
This program is slower than molasses in January! What are they doing? Running it off a modem in someone’s garage? Forget this! Maybe I should just add them to the “do not call” list. I wonder who designed this stupid, and wildly inefficient Web site? I bet Microsoft was involved.
Now, where was I? Oh, I was trying to exit the cobweb of catastrophe that had become my existence. Of course, what is awful for one, might be OK — even good, for someone else. It’s difficult to know these things, and harder to explain them. I took Psychology 101 about 38 years ago.
I wonder how much of my textbook has been revised? I remember this course, because we needed a subscription to Psychology Today. I did not renew.
Does anyone offer a psychology refresher course for baby boomers who learned it in the 70’s?
School was different then; computers used punch cards. Punch cards had to be numbered in case you dropped them. I learned this when I was about to submit a portion of my Accounting 2 final. There was only one printer, for everyone, and at one moment — everyone in the school seemed to want to use it. As several of us raced for the window, where we submitted our punch card programs to a work-study student, I collided with another student, scattering my precious punch cards all over the floor. I must have looked dejected, because this smarty-pants leaned over and said, “You should have numbered them.”
I could have used the two rightmost columns to record the sequence, since punch cards had more columns than were needed by little accounting program. I gathered my cards, went to a terminal, and retyped what was needed. It did not take long, because my program had been saved. I deliberately did not sequence the new set of cards, because I decided that I was never taking another course which involved punch cards, and I wanted to be stubborn.
I did not touch a keyboard for 2-3 years.
- January 29, 2010