I am not a techie. Anyone who knows me knows that.
It's a tribute to the maxim that how smart you are has little to do with the answers you have, but the questions you can ask. My questions about running my laptop expose the nakedness of my simplicity and stupidity. Today's youth of early adolescence run circles around me, I'm quite sure.
I need this thing, but it scares me to death. One wrong hit on one wrong key and weeks of work can disappear. The device's capabilities, of course, can prevent that, if you know and can conceive of it. Understanding that magical things are even possible can empower one in fascinating new ways. If you don't know what you don't know, though--apologies to Donald Rumsfeld--you're up a creek for sure. It's the modern hieroglyphics: If you have no clues how to begin, you have no clues about how to proceed. There is no Rosetta Stone. The laptop becomes a snarly monster that you're afraid to touch.
Such a thing happened to me the other day. True reveal: I've written a novel. Some people from New York have taken a look at it and made recommendations, one of which was to change the start of it. So I did.
Of course, I have to send it back to them. Part of it, that is. Some editors want the first 20 pages, some the first 30, some the first 40, some the first so-many chapters. You can't just send the whole thing to them and ask them to stop reading at a certain point. That's verboten. I guess they can't help themselves, or think you're trying to be sneaky and think they aren't tough enough to stop after what they initially ask for. In which case, they hit the 'delete' button and you're toast.
But okay: Seems easy enough. I was allowed to send the first 40 pages back to this editor. To his credit, he's been very nice about it, as opposed to many in New York and elsewhere who impatiently discard you once their very sinews aren't tingling with your prose. No sense jumping to conclusions: Publishing a novel is one little step at a time.
Here's the thing, though: Sending part of a document to someone requires a series of commands. There's no dropdown on my laptop to do this with two flicks, though. Uh-uh. I had to know a combination of processes to put myself into position to have this fellow review my new writings.
I had written the novel on a Word file, which seemed easy enough. Page numbers can be arranged and everything. Off I went. But now I had to shave some of it off and send only that to someone.
I had no idea how to do it. Many of the commands define themselves; these people really do want you to succeed. Not this one, though. I floundered in techie fog.
So a whole new career, perhaps, late though it may be in life, was in abeyance until I figured out the damn secret, if you will, about shearing off part of a novel and letting someone see it and nothing more (for now).
Enter the Apple store. One of the very nice things about owning a MacBookPro is that, if you're close enough (and I'm less than 20 minutes away), you can schedule an appointment to allow a pure, unadulterated techie look at what you want and tell you how to do it, or do it for you. I was at that moment.
Making an appointment was awkward enough. I had been there before. You'd think they'd have my name under Doesn't Have A Clue, or something. A young lady--I must be careful not to say 'girl,' but she sure looked young enough--lined me up and 48 hours later, there I was.
A different, but also young, person flagged me upon entrance. In Apple stores, along the back wall, there is a bench known as the "Genius Bar," which takes care of folks with real problems, that is, problems that they can actually describe in terms that us mortals could not possibly seek to understand.
I apparently didn't have that level of problem. I had what sounded to be a simple, two-step, one-minute issue that revealed, again, just how out of touch with modern technology I really was. The young man pointed me not toward the Genius Bar, but to a table toward the middle of the room. I was to sit there and await someone who would try hard to hide just how pathetic I was.
It didn't feel comforting, either, to see that that table was crowded with people who looked about my age; looked absolutely stricken, too, with helplessness. The implication was obvious: Please join these other idiots. I settled in and waited humbly.
To its credit, Apple doesn't let you wait long. In a few minutes, a young, fairly attractive lady sauntered by with a motherly air about her--there, there, I'll fix your owie. She introduced herself as Margaret, and I described my problem.
"Okay, let's see here," she said in diving right in. I'm sure she anticipated but a minute or two in putting something of a Band-Aid on me. I figured I was typical--someone who, after never being raised with it or having barely incorporated it into their careers, could only handle the simplest commands. Any multiple functions, especially at one time, would propel us into a sea of uncertainty and paralysis.
Funny thing happened, though: She couldn't do it. Either. She opened what looked like the appropriate file, the one which handled printing (Now, how in the hell was I supposed to figure that out on my own?), and played with some empty spaces. Nothing doing.
She went back a few steps. Maybe, in her hurry, she had skipped something. Still she flailed.
I felt better with every passing minute. I had a problem even the expert couldn't fix. Then I started getting scared. This was something a system should be able to do, and someone trained, and I assumed decently experienced, in handling that system couldn't figure out how to do it. Maybe nobody else could, either. Maybe the universe's karma was hard at work here, telling me that the whole stupid novel was a bad idea anyhow, and that I should forget about it.
Margaret pulled up short. "I'll be right back," she said, and I felt better upon concluding that I had something that needed to be done that apparently not that many people needed to do--otherwise, she'd have done it almost automatically. I was at the stupid table not feeling all that stupid anymore.
Margaret played the fall-back card: She got her boss, a slightly overweight, stone-faced guy who feigned just enough patience to suggest that this should have been handled, but all right, let's get on with it. He bent over and, within maybe 30 seconds, did the required commands. Up popped the file ready to be e-mailed, adjusted the way I wanted it. "Oh, yeah, I just about had that," said Margaret, who needed to let me, and him, know that she wasn't all that stupid, either.
To my everlasting distress, though, the boss did it so fast, and then disappeared into the back where no one could access him, that I had no idea how he had done it. I had taken a 3 x 5 card with me to copy the process down, but in his utter efficiency, he neglected to tell anyone just how it had all happened. So--in case I should need to send the first 30 pages or three chapters to someone else who didn't want 40 pages, I would need to make another appointment, get assigned to the stupid table again, and endure more embarrassment.
Or maybe someone else would, too. And feel stupid. Like misery, it loves company.
Be well, Be careful, With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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