I had an emotional day at the Vermilion Transfer Station. I dropped off two computers. Yes, I had developed an attachment to electronic equipment. One was a fairly recent model about eight years old. The other was the first computer I bought back in 1988.
Yes, I have been called a geek by many, a nerd by a few.
My first computer was a Mac Plus. It cost me $3000 and that included a printer. I had to save up for a second disk drive and a memory upgrade. After owning it for two years I had saved enough for a hard drive. That Mac Plus was four years and several generations off of the original Mac Steve Jobs unleashed on the world in 1984. I’ve always felt tied to history and to celebrity with that computer. My second computer was couple generations off of the original iMac that Steve Jobs introduced on his return to Apple and is reported to have saved the company. I suppose I was building unnecessary nostalgia into these things.
There’s a long way I have to go before I’m like the guy that was found in his New York apartment. He literally had tunnels running through, around, over, and under the stuff he had collected and refused to through away. Yet, why did I hang onto one obsolete computer and one that didn’t work?
I’ve never had a Bic pen last long enough for it to run out of ink. Our family seems to go through cordless phones on a yearly basis. We’ve owned six different horses in as many years. A couple of years ago I gave away a significant number of books. It was a tough thing to do. And since nature abhors a vacuum I’ve been overfilling the bookshelves with new additions. This is not conscious collecting. It is different from stamps, coins, or baseball cards. Even though we have a disposable society we seem to become attached to things and we can’t let go.
There must be something psychological going on here. It could be a tie to something that is tangible. My university memories are drifting away along with the understanding of the textbooks that collect dust in my basement. While my memory pales that Mac Plus was still there and it still worked. I can replace a Bic pen with one identical to it. There’s nothing like that computer anymore.
