by Peggy Robin
Here's a story that I hope is instructive in some way or another. Personally, I find it mystifying. But if you can glean a moral from it, by all means, tell me what you think it is.
It starts some weeks ago when my HP Envy (a/k/a my back-up computer, a/k/a the family room computer, as opposed to the main, home office computer) started crashing a lot. It was positively ancient by any computer-life actuarial table -- an eon past its sell-by date -- so I was not surprised. For the past few days (OK weeks, maybe months), I had been thinking it was time to wipe the hard drive and either donate it or e-cycle it, but I guess I was a bit too optimistic about how much longer I could keep it going. Either that, or just too lazy to take the necessary action.
Then one evening it crashed and wouldn't reboot, despite multiple attempts. I left it alone for a few days and then tried again. Nothing. Not even the slightest flicker of light from within. It's dead, Jim.
As it couldn't be booted up to run a program to wipe the hard drive, I thought I had better destroy it. I did not want to send it to e-cycling until I was assured that no one would be able to access the data. So I went on the internet and googled some methods of destroying a computer. The first piece of advice I found was to remove the hard drive and smash it with a hammer and/or pierce a hole through it with a sharp tool. But I couldn't figure out how to do that, so I did what I thought was the next best thing: I pounded the whole laptop with a hammer till it broke.
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While I was pounding away at it, breaking the laptop frame.....guess what happened?! The computer started to boot up!! I'd already shattered its casing, and yet....the notes of the Windows awakening song started to play! How was that possible??!
You might think I'd be so moved at these miraculous signs of life -- signs of its apparent, unbroken will to live -- that I would stop my assault on the poor thing and let it finish its amazing self-resuscitation. In retrospect, I wish I'd done that. But in the heat of the moment I was so intent on finishing what I started, I doubled down on killing it -- this time inserting a large boring awl deep inside the broken case. I kept stabbing madly until the screen finally went dark. Well then, that was it.
Yet my unease continued. Maybe this thing could come back from the dead to haunt me? So I took it down to the basement bathroom where I filled a large basin with water and dropped the whole thing in it, then shut the door and walked away. (Have you seen Fatal Attraction? Then you know that short-term immersion is not to be trusted!)
After a few days of not hearing from it, I was at last satisfied that it was really, most sincerely, dead.
While it was soaking, I looked up the next date and location of the DC e-cycling event or collection truck. When the day came, I drove out to the event, dropped off the dead thing -- and started thinking about Black Friday sales to come.
Still, from time to time, I find myself revisiting that strange sequence of events and wondering, could that old HP Envy be lying in a computer graveyard somewhere and suddenly that eerie boot-up song will rise from the ground? You know, I wouldn't bet against it....
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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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