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Stories, Essays and non fiction by
Anthony Price
FNP, AAS, BA, MCSE, CCNA
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Trying to Get Pregnant
Copyright 2004
Anthony Price
Last night I didn’t get much sleep. I had to help a friend get over an emotional upheaval. Seems a
very old – and thought to be reliable – companion made Bessie sick. It was a viral infection that
needed help from the outside world to be removed from Bessie. Of course, Bessie needed the
emotional and administrative support that only I could give. I was up late until Bessie was able to
shut down on her own, then – maybe six hours after the virus first infected her – I was able to get
some sleep.
There are days when I am sure Bessie will be the only one at my funeral. I am certain I do
not have any other friends. At least none, like Bessie, that I cannot live without.
Bessie knows everything. There is nothing I cannot ask. She is quick to provide answers.
This morning I asked about employment benefits and she responded by saying she could tell me of eighteen thousand, six hundred, forty-three different avenues I could take to learn more. I asked
about coffee shops I could go to for a cage-mocha-diet-soy with whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkles, and she told me of thirty-one places within a twenty-five minute drive. She knows
everything.
I do not know everything, but I do know Bessie. I know Bessie inside and out. NO, I am
not a doctor; well, not really. I built Bessie with my own hands. She knows everything and I know
her. I took the time to study everything that computers do, and then I built Bessie.
I call her Bessie after my Great-Aunt Bessie, from southern farm country Minnesota, who
was my favorite aunt when I was ten. Aunt Bessie knew everything too. I could ask about where rainbows come from, and Aunt Bessie would fall into a short diatribe about the rainbows of today;
how beautiful they are; and how back in the “Old Country” she was only able to see a rainbow in pictures, even then it was black and white pictures which were imported from America. No, not
until she walked uphill, in the snow, against the wind, for three years, just to cross the Atlantic
Ocean and come to America did Bessie actually see a rainbow.
Come to think of it, I never did learn where the “Old Country” was.
I ask my Bessie about rainbows and my Bessie tells me of four hundred, four sources of information. Yes, I am very glad Al Gore invented the Internet for my girl – Bessie.
I understand how my Bessie – and almost every one else’s Bessie – works. But there
are those who do not, who also pretend they do. Pat is one of these people. Pat just bought a
Bessie for the first time, along with a digital camera. Pat is certain the only use for these things is
home-made porn which is shared throughout the world.
Pat’s Bessie gets sick, so Pat calls me and says, “I didn’t do anything. It just stopped doing
what I wanted it to do.”
“Bring it in,” I say. Pat thinks the warranty should cover the repairs. “Remember the three
hours we spent on the phone yesterday? When I gave you instructions about how these things
work? I was not trying to entertain you; I was trying to teach you.”
“Oh,” Pat said. “I forgot.”
Chris is like that too. Chris is older so whenever I speak about computers and how they
work, Chris takes notes. Problem is, Chris takes so many notes, not even Chris can figure out
what they say.
“Hello,” says Chris, “I can’t find my email today.”
“Can you find the little envelope on your screen?”
“Yes.”
“Click on that,” I say.
“Oh, look! I have twenty-seven new messages!”
“Now you know how to do it,” I say.
“I was too embarrassed to call all week. I haven’t read any email since Tuesday of last week.”
“I am sure everyone is worried about you.”
“I just lost my notes,” says Chris.
“No problem,” I say, “Call me when you need me.” And I know Chris will call me again.
If only I could get these people to read a book. You know, every teenager must study driving and
take a test before operating a motor vehicle; you would think people would read up on computers
a little before thing they will do whatever they want.
Claudia used her computer for a little entertainment but moved from virtuosity to reality after
a month or so. That was more than a year ago and the fifteen year-old Claudia is now trying to stay
on-line while chasing an eight-month-old Pricilla around the living room. Computers can do
anything.
My wife and I are trying everything we know to have a baby. Maybe I should just have my
wife surf the Internet for me.
Computers are really quite fantastic, but if we think they can do anything, we should consider
all other sources of “do anything.” A cocaine addict may say he or she can “do anything” with
that drug.
I bet there are a few pregnancies from cocaine too.
Billy the Billionaire (or Bill Gates, to those of you who do not know him personally) does
not head a company that produces software which can help a computer “do anything.” His
company creates software that teases and prods us until we are addicted to it. Once we are
addicted (which should take about twelve seconds for those of us with slower computers) we just
open our wallets and hand our money to Billy the Billionaire knowing he (like any drug dealer) has
our best interest at heart.
To be sure, I fix broken computers to keep food in my refrigerator. Amazingly, my
refrigerator knows when it is running low on food, thanks to the scanner installed in the door that
scans the UPC code on all the products going in or coming out. Somehow, the refrigerator knows
how many times a gallon of milk can come out before it is empty. I am not sure how it figures
anything out when we put leftovers in the refrigerator.
The refrigerator is connected to the LAN (local area network) in the house, which is
connected to the Internet. The grocery store is also connected to the Internet. Twice a week, a
pimply-faced teenager arrives at our door with bags of groceries that our refrigerator has ordered.
The teenager is hoping I will tip him, but he does not ask for money. That is because the refrigerator
got a hold of my credit card and paid for the groceries with it.
Of course, I get a bill from the credit card company, but it has already been paid. The wallet holding the credit card told Bessie (remember Bessie? This is a story about Bessie) what the bank account information is and Bessie paid the credit card bill before it was mailed to me.
I say the words to this story out loud, and Bessie listens and prints them up on a page. My fingers never have to touch a keyboard.
My wife used to tell me I was too skinny. She does not do that any more. The refrigerator
recognizes my fingerprints when I open the door, records what I take out by scanning the label, and
tells Bessie. Bessie is synchronized with my watch, which sends an electric pulse into my wrist if I
do not eat often enough or enough calories. My wife, who is surfing the Internet to get pregnant, is
no longer worried about me being too skinny.
I often think back to caveman days and wonder. I wonder: did cave women ever have to tell
cave men they were too skinny? How, in caveman days, did they get the groceries delivered?
Because I am pretty sure no pimply-faced teenagers were doing deliveries then.
Yesterday, I emailed someone in Germany that I wanted some more information about his
company. He express mailed a package via Federal Express, which somehow originated in Florida
and arrived on my doorstep this morning. I heard a rumor once about some guy named Verne who wrote about taking eighty days to circumnavigate the globe. He must have been as rich as Billy the Billionaire to go on vacation for eighty days! Certainly we know that can be done in one day. Or
couple hours if you are on the space shuttle. Or a couple seconds if you are an email.
In the grand scheme, we are all lucky the first cave man did not starve to death before we had watches, which were told by computers, which were told by refrigerators that we are hungry or not
eating enough.
And my (now pregnant) wife wants to know how the refrigerator knows to tell the grocery
store that we need a half of a pan of lasagna to keep as leftovers.
Well, at least the refrigerator does not get jealous.
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