OK Computer

There was a time when I wasn't so all fired up about this whole technology thing. I had my legal pad and my Bic stick ball-point pens (black, always). I couldn't imagine composing on a keyboard - so cold and impersonal. I had an electric typewriter for those nights that required a flurry of pages, the kind that professors wanted to see. Still, I chuckled derisively at the notion of a "personal" computer. Personal? Cold and distant and in no way personal machine.
Then I took a job at a video store. All the record keeping was done on computers: tapes, customers, late fees - all of them stored in a box that hummed and was always on. Sometimes the clever video monkeys would stay late and "run backups." They could have been turning lead into gold for all I knew. I just expected the wand to zip across the bar code on the copy of "Birdy" I was renting to customer #0278 and the screen in front of me would tell me that "The Berenstain Bears Worship Satan" was sixty-five days overdue. As long as there was light and sound, there wasn't a problem.
Until one day when there was no light or sound. I had just been made a management type, and I was in charge of a store that had a computer full of information that we couldn't get at because it was broken. Suddenly I was tossed into the deep end of computer maintenance. Luckily, a family friend who had once taken me up to the National Bureau of Standards to show me the massive paper and tape spewing machines of the late sixties, appeared as the font of knowledge that would eventually rescue me from what I came to understand was a "hard drive crash."
I lived through it. I resurfaced the disc. I ran DOS commands. I answered prompts and got the data restored with a couple of days' effort. It had a certain macho appeal, not unlike the first time I changed my own spark plugs. I was the master of the machine.
When the video store closed, it became apparent that I was still lacking what would be considered "marketable skills," unless an encyclopedic knowledge of horror film and a fondness for Chocodiles made me more employable. I called once again on my computer guru to hook me up with some basic word processing and spread sheet prowess. I learned most of the keyboard commands for Wordstar 3.0, and was briefly confounded by Lotus. Then I took my fledgling abilities out into the world. I got a job installing modular office furniture, which brought me in contact with many computers, most of which were sitting on top of desks that I was supposed to move from one side of an office to another.
But I started dropping by my mom's house to use her computer. I wrote stories. I typed resumes. I practiced. It was still another four years before I would use a computer professionally. When I moved to California, I got a job running a book warehouse. A warehouse that was ruled by a computer. When the computer acted up, we had tech guys who wrestled it to the ground and beat it back into shape, but since my job relied on theirs, I kept my nose in their business. It brought me a fuller understanding of Unix and other exciting arcane bits of programming that had eluded me elsewhere. For the record, I still don't understand Unix, but I could pick it out in a lineup.
All of this history allowed me to say, with a straight face, that I had "computer experience" when it came time to interview for a teaching job. That's how I became the computer teacher at Horace Mann. I put together a lab full of Mac LCIIs and dot matrix printers. They were connected with Apple Talk cables. Kids came to my room and made pretty pictures with KidPix. They were sad when they weren't allowed to print out dozens of copies of their pre-fab drawings.
Then I built a new PC lab, with Internet access and a network printer. Kids came to my room and I taught them to type, and they made pretty pictures with KidPix. Then the world changed again, and I became a fourth grade teacher to avoid having to travel between several locations and teaching PE, music and art in schools across east Oakland. The computer lab was packed into a storage container, and there it stayed for three years. During this time, I remained the nominal "tech guy." If it had a plug, and it didn't work, you called Mister Caven.
Today I remain the tech guy at our school. Some of our newer teachers show up with less fear of the box with lights and sound. They understand that it's there to help them. They know it's nothing personal. Thank God.