THE INEFFABILITY OF WISDOM

It's late at night, but not that late.

Downstairs on the kitchen table, the 540c sits in sleep mode, its little green light flashing on and off, the small graphics tablet attached and ready to go. In the summertime, you see, we nearly always eat on the screened-in front porch or in the living room in front of the teevee. That's how I can get away with leaving a computer running on the table! Pretty clever, no?

(For years the far corner of that same table held a small orange-colored black-and-white portable television.I always thought that achieving "teevee on the table" was a high point in JohnBoy's illustrious career, but "PowerBook on the placemat" has to be an even higher order of triumph! Someday I'll pay, of course. These things always come back to haunt the unwary. In my case it'll be in the form of an an overwhelming obligation to provide a "real dining room" somewhere down the road. Mark my words.)

But for now I want to check my email, so it's upstairs to the Beige Behemoth (my PowerMac 8600), also asleep but ready to leap into action. On the way I pass my wife's office, where the iMac hums quietly on top of her desk. Three sleeping computers in the same house! I love it. And I don't care what anybody says, these things are not just "machines." If they were, I wouldn't feel so good about having them around. They're my buddies, my protection. I gaze upon the constellation of tiny green lights from the sleeping system and feel happy, secure, connected. I am neither poor nor alone.

All has not been well recently, however. A significant blemish on this lovely scene for the past three months has been a temporary descent into fear-soaked madness involving money, of all things! At the height of this demonic affliction, I unwisely went out in public without a keeper and paid a visit to the local public library. (Oh, woe. . .)

Several weeks before, I had had a distinctly annoying exchange with one of the library ladies, an otherwise compassionate and perfectly sensible individual. She informed me that the Board of Education wanted to give the county library an iMac, and that they didn't want it! [sputter! pop! sizzle!] "We're all PC here," she offered by way of explanation, "and nobody knows anything about Macs." The staff had also asked their PC technician what he thought about iMacs, and he opined as how they might be cute and shiny but were "kinda slow.". . [crackle! smoke!] Recalling all this and carefully positioning the chip on my shoulder, I prepared to scan for the apocryhphal iMac! Would it even be there?

Over by the window sat a sweatshirted group of young thugs abusing a brace of 3-year-old Gateways. Hmmm. No Macintosh activity there. A few older people sat nearby waiting their turn at the computers, but otherwise. . .wait! Over there!! AHA!!!!

A tell-tale shape lurked underneath an ill-fitting generic dustcover on a table in an quiet corner! Even from across the room I recognized the little guy, whose left-hand speaker grill peeped out from under the edge of the milky plastic and said: "Save me! Save me! Turn me on, Daddy!"

I ripped the cover off and sat down. (An image of a cute little border collie shut inside a hatchback on a sunny day at the mall passed briefly through my mind and was gone.) I punched the button. The iMac chimed: it was alive! Hooray! I was so glad to find it, especially after the earlier revelations. Oboyoboyoboy!!! Finally an iMac right here, in our own county library! I should have expected this, I told myself, realizing that no bureaucrat would turn down free equipment for long. The desktop came up quickly, then whoa, what was this?? An ugly assortment of unnecessary icons lay scattered about! The screen resolution was set way too high!! And none of the really cool stuff was turned on!!! "Save me! Save me!" the iMac cried.

Who among you, I ask, would have acted differently under the circumstances? The sane, perhaps. People from Iowa. Germans, maybe, except not from Berlin. Certainly not Italians or Australians. Me, I dove in! I fixed this, I fixed that. I scooped the icons up and dumped them in a folder. I was about to set the machine to turn itself on automatically the next day and do something really hilarious when a voice interrupted from out of nowhere:

"That's funny, you don't look like you're 16!"

The tone seemed strange and hearkened back to childhood days. I turned to face a strenuously smiling lady suddenly making herself busy all around me. How odd! It was as if I were being reprimanded for being too young to do something, but of course that could not be: I was definitely older than 16! "Why, uh, no, I'm not!" I said pleasantly. (It still had not hit me.) I was having trouble getting an Internet connection and said so. She leaned down, took one look at the spiffed-up desktop and shrieked:

"My things! Where are my things?!? Somebody has screwed this all up!"

An evil tide was slopping at my feet. The demon hordes declared a quorum and the atmosphere darkened. There was bound to be trouble! I hurriedly whipped open the hard disk folder, retrieved the useless icons, and flung them back onto the desktop. (There! But why didn't she leave?) "You really don't need those, anyway, " I ventured helpfully, and then proceeded to explain what an injustice it was that this poor neglected iMac, "the best computer in the library," was just sitting there all cold and unappreciated. . .

So she gave me the word! I was actually in the children's section, where the iMac was reserved for students under 16, who could only use it between the hours of 3:30 and 5:30 P.M., Monday through Friday!! The rest of the time it was supposed to sit, turned off and covered up, off-limits to everyone else. [rumble! grind! fume!] Now all the busy-making made sense, of a sort. I was not only a rule-breaker but a possible pervert! The children's library! Er, well, now that she had mentioned it, the chair was awfully small, and the keyboard came to just under my nose. How did the kids use the computer, I wondered, by sitting on a pile of phone books? (Only later did I realize that the kiddie chair was to keep grownups out!) Arrghhh! I was embarrassed. I was indignant. I was doomed.

Suffice it to say, I did the manly thing (got mad at two nice ladies and huffed my way out). It must have been something that needed doing in any case, because after being thoroughly out of sorts for the rest of the day and night, something else snapped! But don't worry, this was a good thing, probably.

Remember the "fear-soaked madness"? Well, it had to do with calculating future income from various sources and coming up short. ("Save the pobladores!") The vile vortex was threatening to suck everything away, especially what was left of my sense of humor and ability to suffer indignity with grace. The horizon was tilting. The sun flickered. And then I ran the numbers again.

What? How much each month??? That couldn't be right. I'm talking about our impending relocation, of course. Yes, if we didn't eat much or buy any new clothes (ha-ha-ha), we should be fine. It was actually going to work, I suddenly realized, starting to get excited! The thing was, the numbers added up. But wait a minute: these were the same figures I'd been looking at for months and interpreting quite differently. What had changed?

I have no idea, but maybe the truth isn't something we go out and find. Maybe wisdom or grace just emerges once in a while following a spontaneous remission of stupidity. Maybe the whirring fan motors and peaceful yellow-green lights of a household full of sleeping computers had a relaxing effect. And maybe the truth changes! Hah. Gotta get up mighty early in the morning to fool God.

Just maybe, too, if you visit the public library before 3:30 P.M. and ask real nice, one of the library ladies will let you use the iMac anyway -- especially if you show her a trick or two!

I feel a little less stupid already.

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and answers almost all emails. (His own Web site is called the ZOO ZONE for reasons known only to the Answer Engine.) Someday he will post a virtual resumé in this spot and self-promote himself to the techno-middle class.

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February 10, 2012