Wi-Fi hot spot? Or maybe just a cool martini
I have a little hand-held computer I am charging up at this very moment, after which I am going to find someone to show me how it works. It has been in my possession for a year and a half, and my only mastery of the gadget is to play solitaire.
It’s a wireless HP iPAQ, a device that allows me to perform all kinds of communication and entertainment feats that I have not even begun to utilize. My wife bought it for me in response to my I-want-one-too mode.
I was talking computers to an acquaintance one day when he asked if I would like to see his BlackBerry. I quickly said no. He shrugged and said, “It’s a little wonder.” I said, “Regardless.”
Come to find out, a BlackBerry is also one of those hand-held computers. Its possibilities so impressed me that I began lobbying for one, not realizing at the time that working it would require some rudimentary effort on my part.
I am not electronically minded. I do not tinker with toasters to get them to work properly, I do not disassemble lamps, and I do not change modems or add motherboards to my computer. I don’t even know what they are.
My good friend Joshua, who is 5 and has just started school, tried the other day to give me a lesson in the use of a Nintendo game called Kirby. He works it with two thumbs pressing buttons simultaneously, turning the small screen into a battlefield of Kirby against all sorts of peculiar oval creatures.
When I asked if I could try it, he said no without even looking up, probably realizing that I would never be able to understand it.
The moment reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s story “Zero Hour,” in which children gather pots and pans and all kinds of odd paraphernalia to the amusement and ignorance of their parents. Turns out they’re building an entryway for space aliens to take over the Earth.
Joshua was just playing a game, not trying to conquer adulthood, and finally allowed me to try my hand at it. After a few embarrassing moments in which Kirby zigzagged about the screen like a demented housefly, Josh took the gizmo back without a word, condemning me with silence to the role of “stupido.”
BEING humiliated by someone I know to be superior is one thing, but being done in by a kid not even in the first grade is quite another. My wife tried to comfort me by saying, “There, there, Elmer, you may not be very smart, but you’re a very nice person. Well, you’re not always a very nice person either, but you, uh, write just fine.”
I do not take well to being made to look bad and decided that I could prove my worth by conquering the red coffee maker. It is a large machine into which one puts coffee beans and, by adding water and pushing a series of buttons, instructs it to grind the beans and produce liquid caffeine.
It sounds simple enough, but so does putting a couple of guys at the tip of a rocket and shooting them into space. Semantics do not always illustrate the difficulty of an endeavor. I worked for 30 minutes trying to understand the sequence of procedures that would give me coffee, but it required the same kind of miraculous abilities that allowed Jesus to turn water into wine, which I have always felt would be a wonderful talent to possess. Building upon that basic skill, would the ability to turn water into martinis be far behind? In the Garden of Olives?
It is difficult for me to admit failure in print, even though I do need the wordage. I am more victim than practitioner of the columnist’s art. But, as Cinelli points out, it is good for a man to stand up and tearfully announce, “My name is Elmer M. and I am dumber than hell.”
I’m not quite ready for Electronics Anonymous, however, which is why I am charging up my iPAQ. I am determined to figure out how it works, even if it means reading the instructions. A former boyfriend of my Teengirl, now my Twentygirl, showed me once but moved so fast that I was still on Step 1 when he was racing past Step 14. A few weeks after that, Twentygirl dumped him, but I think it had more to do with incompatibility than with a failure to teach me electronics.
My iPAQ is blinking yellow now, which proves at least that I have it connected properly to my computer. The challenge will begin when the blinking light turns a solid amber, and a blue light goes on to indicate the little dear is ready to go.
“You will be able to contact the moon with that beauty,” my computer friend said enthusiastically. “But if it doesn’t work, you can play with my BlackBerry.”
Not on your life.
Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@ latimes.com.
