Getting a Flat Tire on the Information Highway

By Keith Fisher

Is it really Saturday? It can’t be! I'm not ready.

Did you ever have one of those weeks when you had too much to do and not enough week left to do it in? To top it off, I went online last night with two computers. I was attempting to get tickets for the Miley Cyrus concert at Stadium of Fire . . .

I felt like I was giving a dog a bath. I’m not talking about a nice, well-trained dog, the kind that loves baths. I’m talking about the independent happy go lucky dogs that won’t stay in the tub. If you ever try it, I recommend old clothes or a swimming suit, because you’re going to get wet.

To add insult to injury, I also went online yesterday to apply for a job. We live in an unusual time in the world. It’s a time when we don’t need to see anyone. We can talk to people, work with people, even date people, and we never have to leave the privacy of our home. It’s all very convenient, but I miss pounding the pavement dropping off resumés. Even when we had to physically stand in line to get tickets, at least we knew where we stood. We could see how far back in line we were.

The application was rejected, well, it was accepted, but some electronic gremlin told the system that according to my application, I wasn’t qualified for the job. How does it know? I guess I checked the wrong box, but then again, how am I supposed to find out? It's not like I can talk to a real person to discover the problem.

So, were you wondering what happened with the tickets?

I made it all the way through and gave my credit card number. When I clicked the button to finish, an error message popped up telling me something about my email address. While I went back over the form looking for the problem, another message popped up telling me my tickets were no longer available. Can you imagine my frustration? I slammed my fist down on my desk and almost made it collapse. Then I hit it again. I spent the next forty-five minutes trying to get back in, but it told me the tickets weren’t available.

I have been, and still am, a huge advocate of the information age. I was messing with computers at the end of the seventies and early eighties. But sometimes I wonder if we are losing something in our lives.

We even have online critique groups to help us with our writing. What a great service, but I’ve been involved in another, more personal group lately. Oh how nice it is to touch a paper manuscript. To read out loud and use a red pen. To talk to real people and find they have the same problems with writing I do. Above all, to get support. And if I get something wrong, I can find out what it is. All I have to do is ask.

Good luck with your writing—see you next week.