COMPUTER SAVVY
Jason Pettus
You used to be terrified of computers. When dad and I owned a TRS-80 Color Computer in the late Œ70s and kept it in the den, you wouldn’t even walk in the room. You’d stand there at the edge of the den and call out, “Jason. Jason. Time for dinner.”
But then, after I was in college, you decided to finally accept a full-time school nursing position, after a decade of the school district begging you to accept one. It was at a brand new grade school, and the district had made the decision to make this the first computer-standard school in the system’s history. Every single person on staff was issued a Macintosh Classic, and they were all networked to each other inside the building so that there was an in-house e-mail system for all of you. And since you were doing work that you sometimes needed to bring home, you and dad bought your own Mac to have at home. Dad had the souped up Windows machine in the den; you had your cute little Mac in the family room.
And every time I’d come home, you knew a little bit more, and a little bit more, and you got less and less scared by the month. And one weekend I came home and you were talking about work, and you said, “And my entire hard drive crashed at work and Mike had to come in and reconstruct the whole thing.” And I thought... wow! Who are you? And what have you done with my mother?
But still, to this day, your favorite piece of software, the one you use almost constantly, is PrintShop, the ultimate “user-friendly” program that helps people design greeting cards. Even to this day, ten years after you originally got the program and have since moved on to the “PrintShop Deluxe on CD-ROM,” I will come home for holiday and you will show me a new card you’ve just created.
And you say the same thing every time. “Look, Jason, look! I made this myself!”
