Tender Offers has played second fiddle to more important things this week. I have totally forgotten that i am an author. If the truth be told, the only attention I’ve paid to my books is to put them in a box — somewhere. I am moving my law offices. After forty years of practicing law I am over-whelmed by the stuff I have accumulated and the memories I’ve associated with the stuff that make it difficult to get rid of the stuff.
Moving day is never fun! It is hard work with equal parts physical labor and psychological trauma. Change is never easy, but I find as I get older, change of any description is more difficult to accept with excited expectations. It is more likely to be meant with the realization of a bevy of new aches and pains, and unanticipated glitches and complications. That is the reality, and that is why most sane people do not like to even think about moving. But, I discovered a totally new and unexpected reason never to want to move again–No computers! For two whole days, I have been without my computer and–gasp!– without an internet connection. I must say that this withdrawal is disturbing — at least it has been for me.
That caused me to start thinking. Unlike the millennium generation, I lived most of my life without computers–and yes, Virginia, there was life then, and it wasn’t in caves either. Believe it or not, we thought we were happy. I am old enough to remember the introduction of television. When I was a child the television was just coming into its own. We were so excited to have our own TV set in our home that we sat up just watching the test pattern. For those of you not old enough to remember, the test pattern was shown when the television went off the air for the day, usually at mid-night. Going off the air for the day was always preceded by the National Anthem usually by the Marine Corps. There were three stations then and all three signed off for the day leaving the screen blank except for a circle with the station’s call letters flickering in shades of gray and white. ‘That’s it folks’ was the order of the day. There was no such thing as a computer–well, maybe that is not entirely correct. They were just starting to be developed. They took up whole buildings and were in the hands of the government. No one ever thought that one day they might be in everyone’s pocket.
Life was different then, There was no virtual reality. We all had to deal with reality as we knew it, and it wasn’t always easy. There was no instant news. If you wanted to know what was going on, you read a newspaper or listened to the radio. The radio and the movies were the source of entertainment. A whole Saturday matinee cost ten cents and there were two or three features. No one chased you out when it was over. You could stay and watch it all over again.
I don’t know why moving forces me to reminisce, but it must be because of all the memories that are evoked as part if the traumatic aspect. It is always easy to look back and think that yesterday was part of the ‘good old days’. I might have been very willing to go there if the stark reality of loss of my virtual world hadn’t hit with such forceful impact. Going two whole days without the internet! is this what withdrawal is all about? Utter and absolute devastation is the only way to describe it.
What would I do? What would any of us do without our computers? Without the internet? How different our worlds would be. No, I for one do not wish to return to the good old days. Give me today, with my internet, my news and even my newly found social media. That with a glass of wine will get me though the trauma of today’s world, even if I do have to move again.
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