Is it wrong to have an emotional attachment to an inanimate object?

Scratch that question. How about this: If you are about to drop your laptop computer but quickly react like a gazelle to snatch it back before it hits the ground but instead use the force of your superhero-like reflexes to instead propel the laptop away from your body, how far will the laptop fly? The answer: About 8 feet.

Recently I managed to quite effectively destroy my PowerBook G4 (yes, it’s a Mac and I know that behind your sneers and eye-rolls you are secretly jealous of my technological superiority). Its name is Gunther, by the way. We name everything in the office. One printer is named Gozer, another ED-209. If you can recognize both of those movie references, you have Jedi movie skills, my friend.

Anyway, back to the fateful occurrence of “Black Thursday.” It seemed like it was in slow motion as it flew peacefully through the air and I was preparing for my Christmas Story “OH, FUDGE!” moment to come. I didn’t quickly drop to my knees to assess the damage. I just stood there looking at it and shook my head with no one to be mad at but myself. I closed it, as it had opened upon impact, and walked with it to the 365 compound. There I quickly ascertained that the screen was, as we call it in the publishing business, screwed. It looked like some kind of Road Warrior device, kept alive by some kind of Darth Vader voodoo. It was off.

I took a deep breath and pushed the power button. Bwoooonnng! It started! In fact, it worked perfectly. It was just horribly scarred and maimed. It took a pliers and a tin snips to get the DVD drive accessible again, but that too worked great once unearthed. I think it may be safe to say that no single computer in the Tri-States gets a more thorough workout than my laptop. That’s sad, I know, but I’ve found a way to make a living doing what I love to do, so beat it. I work on it, I play on it. I use it for my band and well, just about everything. It gets so hot I think I could cook on it if I flipped it over. For now, I think that heat serves mostly to keep me sterile when working at home in the recliner. It is made of aluminum and in three years, I have worn through the metal with my hand in two places. That picture you see here is not dirt on the computer, it’s missing metal that was once brushed and beautiful.

This computer was the heart and soul of everything you have seen on Dubuque365.com for years. It is the most valuable and indispensable non-living thing in my life (and my company’s life) and in a blink of an eye (and a graceless ballet maneuver) it nearly slipped from this mortal coil. When my new computer arrived from the magical UPS man, I felt a twinge of guilt and sadness to be retiring the star quarterback. I wondered if he may revolt, feeling the presence of his rookie replacement, and decide to stop working. But no, he’s still kicking.

In fact, I decided to write this one last article on worn-out keys, looking through his cracked and discolored face at the document that is visible only in the corner of the screen that is still active. Apple, in its brilliance, has a function where you connect your new computer to your old one and in the click of a button, the old machine, settings, files, programs, e-mail cache and all, is automatically transferred to the new computer. An hour and 80 gigs later, the new computer looks, acts and appears in every way to be the computer I l grew to love, but with a massive facelift, faster processor and bigger hard drive. The beast will not be shot like a prize race horse. It will be pampered and put out to pasture, called upon only by less-skilled, less-demanding hands for simpler purposes. We can rebuild it. We have the technology. We shall outfit it with a slave keyboard and an external monitor and tuck away the hideous creature where it can work but not be seen. I think it will be fine with that, so long as we let it live and breathe.

And people will pass by it and perhaps call upon it for favors and never know that they are in the presence of a legend. And it will not tell them, for it knows what it has accomplished in its life and that is good enough for the mighty Gunther.