The Screaming Craptop of Doom

I just bought a new HP laptop. I did this for two main reasons. 1) My desktop just died and the laptop isn't far behind. I've had both of them for six years now, which makes them about 257 years old in computer years. 2) I'm about to deploy and I'll be damned if I'm going to wait in line for 45 minutes to check my e-mail on the communal computers while some airman tools around on his MySpace account. I don't want to share and I don't want to feel guilty about surfing the net for something frivolous and stupid while a line of people wait to use the computer.

So I went to Best Buy the other day to look for a laptop. I took my old laptop to SOS and it sounded like it was going into orbit every time I turned it on. It even looks archaic. People would look at it and ask, "What is that?"

I was ashamed of the laptop. Everyone else was working on sleek, silent hyperspace laptops. Laptops that didn't threaten to explode when a Word document was opened. Meanwhile, I was using the bulky, Screaming Craptop of Doom. I may as well have been using a Commodore. I may as well have walked in with feathered bangs and leg warmers. That's when it dawned on me--I'm turning into my parents.

My parents don't jump on every new technological development the nanosecond it hits the shelf. My parents still have dial-up internet. They finally bought a push button phone while I was in college--in the mid '90s. Then my mom got nostalgic and bought another rotary phone last year. It's not that they're cheap (actually I should say it's not just that they're cheap). But if an item still works, why buy something new? Every car my family ever owned was on its last leg when we traded it in. We had a 1960-something mustard-coloured Toyota Corolla station wagon that we kept around until 1986. It had a lovely black vinyl interior that was suffocatingly hot in the summer and necessitated the use of towels if you wanted to wear shorts. It got really sporty if we took the dog anywhere with us. She would pant like an obscene phone caller while producing copious amounts of drool. In addition to the doggy smell that ensued, it made things very slippery.

I'm wondering if this is hereditary. It may explain why most of my cameras are no less than 40 years old. My house is 55 years old. I secretly wish I had a VW bus.

I guess I'm a bit of a Luddite, although I won't go so far as to live with dial-up. So, maybe I'm just a retro ho.