She spent her final days tethered to the wall, a hostage to her own dwindling battery power.
My loyal laptop died slowly, one failing port at a time.
I kept her plugged in longer than I should have, which wasn’t fair to the old girl. She’d served with dignity, her once-sassy Intel 2 Core Duo Processor chugging along respectfully, her giant, high definition screen held high, despite the dust and bits of breakfast crumbs stuck to it.
Oh, her six gigabytes of memory let us all down every now and then, especially in these latter years. But, I should have been more patient with her. Certainly, I regret that Sunday afternoon I hurled salty insults at her as she crashed and lost all the work I’d done in each of the seven windows I’d kept open.
Poor beleaguered soul. All those open windows made her freeze! I should have been more protective of her sad, old bones, maybe upgraded her operating system.
I apologize for that and for all those times I subjected her to the Geek Squad’s condescension.
But, the nine years I spent with her marked some of the best in both our lives. We surfed, Googled, downloaded, edited, uploaded, designed, commented, posted and subscribed. I remember well the magical night we discovered Amazon Prime and its brilliant one-click shopping. Snow fell outside the window and I laughed maniacally as she zipped me along like a slick Santa sled. To the top of the page! To the top of the line! Now click away click away click away mine!
She moved much slower these past few weeks, her tired, dull cursor jerking occasionally to life in startling staccato spurts. Her touchpad lost its click. The A key stuck and I found myself searching looking for A-less words.
An undignified swatch of duct tape held her power chord to its port.
She was ready to go, anxious to join the towers and fat-backed screens that proceeded her. She’ll rest comfortably in our basement, which has become a New Orleans burial ground for dead electronics, until we give her a proper send off.
Godspeed, my little friend. Your days were good and long upon this earth.
