Sunday, October 22, 2006
Covington: Paperclip
By Gary Covington
Looking In
REGULAR readers of my Sunday scribbling will know that I'm now the proud owner (and learner driver) of a second-hand laptop PC. It's my first close encounter with a personal computer and thus I'm carefully working my way through a "how to" volume.
I'm learning about clicking and shutting down and folders and files and -- so that I can e-mail items like this to the office -- I've tiptoed into word processing, into the world of Microsoft Word.
I can't yet compose on the screen. What's that new word? -- interact? -- I can't yet interact with the beast. Pecking away at the keyboard is such a delicate task. Unlike pen and yellow pad there is no angry scoring out of words, no slashing of arrows from one paragraph to another and no swishing of circles around duff clauses. Instead the program insists on underlining every other word in a red or blue squiggle or, if my prose is particularly unconventional, a brown zigzag. And, I've discovered, I'm not alone with my PC; there's an animated paperclip who -- yes, it's a who -- insists on trying to chivvy me along.
It's like having a nosy neighbor looking over the fence, minding everybody's business except their own. I'm positive -- it's okay, the laptop's in its bag and paperclip can't hear me -- I'm positive that he can read my mind and certainly that he's pretty put out at having to look after a fumble fingers like me.
He arrives when I open the Word window, screeching down a length of yellow pad road as a motorcycle, transforming into a paperclip and then -- all innocence and smiles -- waiting for me to do something.
We eye each other up. He looks around; to the left and then the right, fixing a glare upon my mug of tea, daring me to slop the stuff over the keyboard. If I don't make a move he scratches his head, jiggles his Groucho eyebrows up and down. One day he'll come on with horn-rimmed eyeglasses and a false nose. If I'm motionless even longer he squats down, Red Indian fashion, to take a zizz.
He perks up when I get tapping, sometimes sliding up the screen (and I don't know how he does that) to get a better look. He bongs me for omitting the upper-case first letter of the days of the week, bongs me if I hit caps lock and bongs me if I stop in mid-sentence and backtrack. And then he gets out a notebook and pencil -- is he going to book me for loitering? What a cheek. What brass.
The other day he'd sidled halfway up the screen, concealing the end of a line or two. I moved him out of the way to the top right-hand corner. He didn't like that. Sulked. Raised his eyes heavenward in resignation -- look where thunder thumbs have put me now -- and then he watched me like a hawk, waiting for me to fumble.
He didn't wait long. This mincing about the keyboard is just not me, I'd inadvertantly stroked the wrong key and an alien window parked itself in the center of the screen. This always catches me by surprise -- I go into stunned mode -- but not paperclip.
Quick as you like he's rapping on the glass of the screen. Clink, clink, clink, you've done it again Covington you oaf, clink, clink, clink. To ram home his point he presses his face to the glass -- clink, clink, clink -- like an awful something from the abyss.
And he's so smug. Panic over he sits there wearing a self-satisfied smirk looking this way and that. He's so sure of himself that even if I close the Word window he hangs around a second or so before screeching off. Worse, much worse, I'm starting to talk to the guy.
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