In a timely and damn near prescient comment, Boo Bear described my desktop as “your rebuilt 1986 DOS computer,” and although the year may have been exaggerated by a decade or two, the spirit of the remark was dead on. You know my relationship with technology, and if you don’t, I’m slow to embrace it and generally wary of any device that enables a constant hail of e-mail, texting, or tweets. Indeed, my policy to date has been to remain two to three cycles behind whatever’s hot, in hopes of escaping this bombardment of communication.
But recently I’ve been questioning whether this approach is sustainable. Now, it’s not like I’ve developed a sudden urge to speak in 140-character bursts. It’s the smaller, more subtle realizations–how Hulu is starting to chug with every successive release of Chrome, for instance, or how Firefox performance is nigh untenable on my trusty box. This phenomenon extends beyond my computer. My cell contract is up for renewal, and with it is an offer for a free phone. Good problem to have, right? When I’m browsing the devices compatible with my text-free plan, however, the list of options seems woefully thin. Most entries appear to have hobbit keyboards attached to them–or no buttons at all!–and the harvest of simple handsets is meek, to put it lightly.
There comes a moment when you’re not just behind the curve in technology, you’re also inconvenienced by it. You’ve gone beyond outdated, in a way, and are instead dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future. I may be at that point. Heck, I might be well past it, and capitulating may be the only choice left. But part of me still wants to dig my heels in, never give an inch. Remember when things were less frenetic, less cluttered? This would be the era when people who weren’t monks could walk from one place to another without bowed heads. It was also an age when operating an automobile and typing with your thumbs were mutually exclusive competencies.
Unbroken sleep has been a rare commodity recently because, well, y’know, and after three consecutive days, it’s starting to wear on me. Mornings are navigable enough, but as soon as early afternoon hits, the nodding begins, and with every refresh of my Outlook inbox I’m one step closer to a sweet, sweet nap. There’s only one thing keeping me awake: the fact that I’m very partial to employment.
It’s a problem that must be solved, make no mistake, and I’m certain I can’t be the only one being jolted awake at 5:45 AM. It’s just statistically improbable, with an appreciable quantity of other homeowners and tenants within earshot. What makes this episode especially challenging is the acute lack of data on the perpetrator. I have a sound and an hour, and you can’t make much hay there. I mean, it’s not like I would follow in my old man’s example with a more hands-on solution, as it were, but I’d sure like the option. You may recall there was an issue with dog shit, and the “data” there was the bag of shit itself. It was something, though, and all I needed to put an end to subsequent deposits, if you know what I mean.
These travails of suburban living are real-world puzzles, and as annoying as they are, it’s also perversely enjoyable to mull over them, your mind pacing much as Scrooge McDuck would, with the floor worn into a deep groove. But at the same time, I’m keenly aware of how people halfway across the world are contending with tsunamis, earthquakes, and goddamn radiation leaks, right at this very moment, and suddenly an errant motorcycle seems starkly unimportant. Perhaps I should be glad there’s an apartment community still standing and able to house reprobates of the noisiest kind.
We subscribe to a different kind of table talk here, and it felt like you were long overdue for a courtside update. When we last spoke on the matter, I had committed to rebuilding my paddle and acquiring a more aggressive style of play, and I’ve held fast to these pledges. The reason why I’ve done so, and why I choose to devote time to something as silly as ping-pong, is because it’s the only way I’ll get my heart rate up during a typical workday. This isn’t counting the walk to the parking garage–or the trips to the break room, obviously–and I only wish I were kidding here.
My paddle remains intact with all of its original materials. Turns out there’s a ways to go before my competence outpaces my equipment, and the ol’ girl still has some mileage in her. Is that sexist? Feminizing it, much like how people sometimes refer to a car, ship, or rifle? I guess it would be, especially if you’re a chick reading this who also happens to be shaped like a ping-pong paddle. That would be raw. But the point still stands: what really needed rebuilding wasn’t the blade. It was myself, profound as that may be.
And rebuild I have. It began with attempts to smash pretty much everything, which didn’t work out so well. That’s what’s needed, though, whenever you learn something different. You’re basically parsing the spectrum, in a way, and trying your newfound skill everywhere and anywhere, until you find that golden median and learn how to use it judiciously. Puzzling through when to defend, when to deflect, and when to press, well, that’s the fun part.
It felt freeing to possess a wider menu of moves. Merely having these moves, however, isn’t enough. The punchline is the play itself, to which everything else is secondary. It’s not a question of always winning the point, either, because heaven knows I’ve lost countless games in the past month. You’re in search of that one moment when you’re in the flow, focused intently on the ball, your paddle weightless as you paint on your dark green canvas. There’s this feeling of agency, and win or lose, you alone claim authorship of your story.