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When I was a kid, I believed that tiny people -- fairies, probably -- lived inside television sets and staged the shows. Now that I'm an adult, I know the truth. The tiny people -- gremlins, probably -- live inside my laptop computer and pull the ever-annoying "New! Improved!" prank.
You know the one. You're tappity-tap-tapping away at your keyboard when one of the gremlins whips out the "Windows will shut down your computer in 15 minutes to install important updates. Close all programs now" pop-up.
"I'm trying to work here!" I shout at the machine.
"Fourteen minutes," the computer flashes.
"I'm on deadline!" I scream.
"Thirteen minutes," the computer flashes.
It offers the option to delay the update for an hour or day, but that's only so it can harass me for longer periods to close every single file and tab I'm using.
If the machine catches me away from my desk, it pounces. Worse, if I ignore its admonitions and keep working, at the witching hour, all my files blink out one by one, and the machine turns itself off. The only sound is the giggling of gremlins as they hide all my documents.
For all that trauma, I've yet to detect one single New! Improvement! -- unless you count being locked out of half the office software. Gremlins.
Remember when "New! Improved!" was helpful and unobtrusive? For example, you cleaned your floors with Spic and Span for a dozen years, and it never changed. Then one day, New! Improved! Spic and Span showed up on store shelves.
That's how you found out. Not because your mop froze inside the bucket and refused to power on until you clicked on the mandatory update, but because you saw a new version sitting quietly on a shelf. You could either drop it into your shopping cart or you could just keep walking toward the cereal aisle for Alpha Bits because that's why you went to the store. Or maybe that was just me.
When did everything in the world fall into need of constant updating?
Hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers and duct tape -- they're all tools that the builder uses without backtalk or snarky comments. Dad's circular saw never sassed him.
But now we are loaded with electronic tools that can't wait to torment us with the next New! Improvement!
My smartphone now is stocked with so many New! Improved! updates that it freezes until I hit the restart button, which works kind of like a defibrillator for electronics. Then I can downdate the last round of updates, so that it's useful again.
The wall phones with rotary dials I used for the first 30 years of my life never stopped ringing, even when you wanted them to. They insisted on working. Every time.
True, they never showed me a video, but I could call for showing times. They never Googled a single fact, but I could call the information desk. They never played a single game, but I could hang up and go outside and experience actual reality, instead of virtual reality.
Come to think of it, maybe that's the best way to update our New! Improved! electronics -- by powering down and escaping to the Old! Familiar! outdoors. I have yet to encounter a gremlin in a lounge chair under a shade tree.
— Badger Old! Creaky! Cole at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.