When I’d been dating The Daver for about 5 minutes, I made mention of the fact that I needed to head to an office supply store and pick up a planner/calendar for school, something costing in the neighborhood of maybe 5 bucks. 10 if I went fancier. He took this opportunity to offer to buy me my very own PDA. The green aspect of it appealed to me, here was this thing that cut down on the use of paper and could be used year after year (my parents are hippies. Shut up.).

I insisted that he buy me a Coach PDA holder to go along with it, and when he agreed, it sealed the deal. I was to become a PDA user! Finally, I was moving into the 21st century along with the rest of the planet!

I spent a couple of hours painstakingly entering information into it, spent a couple of days carrying it around in my purse, occasionally whipping it out so that I could look cool (I’m sure that anyone around me was probably all, “what’s with that chick and her PDA?”), and then promptly lost the power cord.

The PDA promptly crashed, all of my information was lost, and the PDA is still knocking around somewhere in my dressing table.

Flash forward several years, when I see an advertisement for a cool new fancy camera which boasts that anyone can use it. Because we were currently using such a piece of shit camera that all of the pictures (like it or not) came out as though we’d been using a soft focus lens and the subjects either posing for Glamor Shots or starring in soft core porn, I immediately began to petition for it.

For Christmas that year I got the camera (with the fancy camera bag I’d insisted upon. You can see clearly where my priorities lie.). By March, it had been dropped, the lens busted, and for Mother’s Day I got a new lens. I can work the camera, providing one of the many buttons hasn’t been pressed (and thereby changing….something. Not sure what.) and frequently take pictures with it, but I can all but assure you that I’m not using it to it’s full capacity of awesomeness. Period.

Due to my long and sorted history with computers (my own father, who is an amateur computer person would often “reformat his hard drive” without remembering that I had had several school papers saved on it, so I’d have to scramble to rewrite my papers mere hours before they were due. Fun times.), it was with great trepidation and nail biting that I got a new laptop shortly before my wedding in 2005. I had requested a Mac, as they seemed to be the most idiot-proof (read: Becky proof) available, but due to some misfortune on my part it had some things (inborn) wrong with it. I can’t elaborate because I am as techno-savvy as the dog is, but it would crash a lot.

Earlier this year, those problems were fixed (by professionals. Not me. My idea of “fixing it” involved a sledgehammer and my garage floor), and all was well and good in Lappy-Land.

Shortly after these kinks were ironed out, “someone” stepped on my laptop. As was the case with the camera “dropping” I have no idea who really did it (although my suspicions are that I, myself did it (this is pretty much my standard MO). Well, this cracked the screen.

This is not a detail that annoyed me all that much, as I can work around most things, but it drove my husband nuts just thinking about it. He ordered me a new screen from eBay, and promised to take care of it.

Early last week, I knocked my lappy off of it’s perch. In addition to bending the power supply thingy (which I have had to replace a total of 10 times. A combination of sheer stupidity and poor design working against me. Let me be clean that the stupidity is on my part), this further cracked the screen. It looks amazingly trippy, but is now next to impossible to work from. Shamefully, I keep suggesting alternate things that I can now do with it to Dave, like as a fancy paperweight! Add some bling, and it might be quite cute hung on the wall!

Dave sweetly (and amazingly without rubbing it in my face like I was a bad dog who’d dropped a shadoobie on the carpeting, which, ever so maturely I’d probably have done) set me up on one of his many extra lappy’s. This is absolutely fine with me, as my requirements for a computer involve exactly one criteria: Email Machine. And preferably indestructible. I’ll never be able to utilize all that a computer is able to do, and any expectations of this would be as stupid as expecting Alex to potty train himself while I watch “my stories.”

But one of the greatest things about having a geek for a husband is that This. Will. Not. Do. It doesn’t matter that the computer I am using is free (and therefore better to me), he is bound, set, and determined that I need a new computer. Period. I don’t seem to be able to sway this one (again, I need to change my expectations here), and probably won’t rest until I have one.

Once I realized that resistance, in this case, was futile, I explained that although I loved my Mac, I’m okay with a much cheaper computer. I had mistakenly believed that this battle was over until last night, when Dave heard that there was a new “sexy” Mac coming out (a computer is about as sexy to me as a dishwasher), and that “I was going to change my mind about going with a cheaper laptop.”

The logical sequence for me is as follows (and starts with the supposition that I can’t possibly take care of fancy technology): Dave, who just got a new laptop for Christmas, could hand that down to me, and buy himself a nicer lappy. To me, it seems to be a win-win situation: we can get the much fancier Mac Air for Dave, who will take care of it gently and lovingly as if it were an ailing lover, and I can have something already paid for and (slightly) broken in. I can (falsely) claim that any damages that it incurs in my ownership were there before I got it (which will make me feel like less of a failure), and Dave and bask in the newness and awesomeness that is the Mac.

As Dave is one of the sweetest people on the planet (no sarcasm here. Really), I have my doubts that this will play out according to my plan, as I’m sure one day he’ll march happily home with the new Mac and present it to me, amidst my protestations that I don’t deserve nice things. I’m the reason we can’t have nice things! Me!

Eventually I will cave to the awesomeness that is my new Mac, and probably soon after, I will somehow mangle it beyond AppleCare. Rinse, repeat. Second verse, same as the first.

But, if past is an indicator of present, I will probably get a rockin’ case for it first.

——————-

Is there anyone out there able to make me feel better about being such a freaking klutz? Seriously, what I haven’t mentioned here is that I felt incredibly bad about what happened to my laptop. I was nearly in tears (which is rare for cold-hearted Aunt Becky) for quite awhile over it (dramatic much?).