Essay "Floating Confirmation"

By Charles V. Walker

What I like most about my new computer is the customized screen saver, one I designed myself. It’s so “me” I sometimes lean back, give my muse and fingers a rest, and wait for the s. s. to come on. 

Another reason I’m enjoying it is I never had an s. s. before.  

But wait a minute. Should it be "an s. s." or "as. s."? Does the choice of the article depends on the sound of the abbreviation or the sound of the words represented by the abbreviation? I can’t believe William Safire, the Grammar Lady or even my tenth-grade English teacher, a terrific guy who used to knead my back while lecturing would approve of “as. s.”

Anyhow, I never before took time to install even a boilerplate s. s., because my old notebook computer would doze off if I gathered so much as a single strand of wool. But oh, how I used to envy those people who came back from washing their hands to find a live aquarium filling the screen. Or gradual dissolves from one Monet masterpiece to another, followed by a series of paintings by Van Gogh. 

My new desktop computer can sleep just as soundly as the notebook, but because it works so hard, zipping through cyberspace (DOES THE COMPUTER ACTUALLY ZIP THROUGH CYBERSPACE? ZIPPING DATA THROUGH CYBERSPACE?) at the blink of a mouse, I decided it needed a diversion before being tucked in. The diversion had to be something personal, something the computer could relate to me, thereby furthering the bonding process between man and machine. The bonding has not been easy, what with my switching from Windows 3.1 to Windows 98 while adjusting to a full-size keyboard—something I haven’t seen since my old Underwood hit the junk pile. Several times the s. s. has come to life while I pondered such presumably simple tasks as how to copy something or find a file. Its effect is so mesmerizing--just two words floating slowly around the screen, twisting, turning,

changing color--that it once put me to sleep even before the computer dozed off. 

But I try not to let that happen because the words were carefully chosen for their magical power to bring me back to the task at hand, to prod me--ever so gently--into at least searching for the abandoned track.  

More often than not the magic works, for a while anyway. But invariably there comes another troublesome sentence (see paragraph 3, above), an awkward transition, some artificial sounding dialogue, a scene that refuses to develop. It’s so easy then just to blank it all out, relax, and wait for that faint click heralding confirmation of . . .