Steve Jobs, Cary, Alan, Mac and me.
I went to BSU in the ‘80s. Graduated in ’87. My first experience with a computer was a required science class. Computers were being introduced into the college body elect as a science class.
It was like a foreign language to dyslectic me. I spent my life from elementary school on glued to an Underwood typewriter. (For you youngsters under 35) Underwood is to typewriters like Apple is to computers. That is if in some ancient history class you learned the word typewriter, which had a keyboard. Which facilitated putting words on a sheet of paper pushing them out much as the screen of a computer. Talk to your grandmother. People in the Secret Service use them because you can’t hack into them. Type messages and mail them. Neat concept.
Which bring us to Steve Jobs. My learning computer was IBM. My midterm was to type this paper in class and do things that forced me to push buttons that did other things.
What things I did caused all my beautiful words to go into columns. When I tried to push a button to reverse this process, the columns began to march. The computer assistants were women in business school learning to be office assistants. They were called secretaries in my time. Which is how I learned to type by typing all the time on my secretary mothers typewriter. Anyhow what ever their present title they learned a great deal of new words as I vocally expressed my opinions of computers.
However I received a good grade, passed the classes and before the class was over I was typing all my papers on a computer in the computer lab. That’s what all the rooms that housed computers that Ball State students used under guard and lock and key were called.
In another blog I will describe the wonderful adventures I had in that lab. That is, after losing my IBM virginity to the new monster in my life, the computer.
During this time in addition to my husband’s help in paying the university bills I supplemented my money by writing for the newspaper as I always had on my Underwood and doing tarot, as I always had. I had no home computer. Way too expensive.
I did the tarot in a little shop called Quarter Moon, which was owned by Cary and Alan Hayes. I also taught classes there. Once of which was past life regressions. The payment for this was a Mac. Now I was ready for this change in computers because I had just read IBM and The Third Reich and was no longer sure I wanted to write on an IBM. Which was good. Because...
I fell in love with the all in one unit Mac. Only the keyboard and printer were separate. And Cary guided me though all the new procedures that Apple had invented. Plus she jacked that baby up so I got an Apple program of 7.0, email and could even go to the Library of Congress on it. And every week or everyday I got a personal letter from Steve Jobs. All right, maybe his assistant. I choose to think it was he. And it explained all aspects of the Mac. Other subscribers wrote in their problems, and he helped work it out including me.
Alone in my new office on that Mac, I wrote my stories for the newspapers, my novels, never published, and they are great ones, and I learned computers. When Jobs’ failed, I called Cary. When I needed to learn to do things, Cary came over, with her magic statement of “all you do is this.”
I learned when she said that to write it down, before I forgot. I kept a file of everything I wrote down of her precious words. I printed out some of Jobs words. (I wished I had printed them all out. Those words lost forever in those beginning days of Macs.) The cover on the file is called “Cary’s and Steve’s Little Red book of Computers.” I could look up something at 3 in the morning when I was in trouble. I also found out if I got on the computer at any time someone would answer my question. My idea of heaven.
Then the hard drive went out, a very bad person said they could fix it. Cary was out of town. So I let them and they kept it and brought me another one. It looked like it but my stuff was gone, even through they tried to bring a lot it of back, they said. It was just like my old Mac stuff. It wasn’t. They kept the hard drive and the Mac, gave me a substitute. In all fairness one of the young men came back and did a great number of things that replaced all that I needed. But my old Mac kept telling me something was missing, maybe valuable.
This new one looked just like my old Mac baby, and I still have it. One just like it is in the Smithsonian. I have the printer, the hard discs, everything. It is a reminder of Steve Jobs, Cary, Alan and me and my learning experience into the modern world of computers at 50 something.
I was reminded of this when his death was announced. I heard the speech he made at a graduation about “do what you love, follow your heart and dreams.”
I want to tell him I have. I followed my dream. I learned that it doesn’t matter if you become rich like Steve. It only matters that you are content, you do what you love, learn computers, have fun, find joy in everything that you do. Most of all you love your Mac.
Now I have an Apple Computer, an Iphone and am saving for an Ipad. I am still on email; Facebook, Live Streaming and my daughter put me on Twitter today so I could keep up more with Global Revolution. I have a whole host of apps. I still write, had poems, several mysteries published, still do past lives and tarots, try to manage the farm with kids and my assistant since my husband died. But, Steve I am doing what I love. I will never run a big company, own stock, be rich with money, but your computer with the email, Cary, and Alan have opened up the world to a 73 year old women who knows that it is possible to confront every challenge that comes my way. Thank you.PS now I have aps, Itunes and a camera. You are wonderful
