It seemed so innocuous. I needed some AAA batteries to operate a digital hand recorder and was too lazy to go to the Walgreens on the corner, so I took them from my Handspring. An hour later I put the batteries back in my Handspring and turned it on. The blank screen seemed so strange.
I hit a few more keys, checking my address book, my memos, my settings. The screens were as pristine as when I bought the PDA nearly four years ago
I called Craig, my technical friend in residence. He thought I wanted to talk about our usual—the psychological underpinnings of heterosexual relationships and the stuff he’s just bought on eBay.
“I scored a cheap version of Quickbooks for you,” he said. “You were looking for that, right?”
I tried to remain calm; so many times I’d called him in a panic over some computer malfunction, and all it took was a key stroke to restore my data. This time, I assumed, would be the same. I couldn’t entertain any alternative outcome.
“Craig, I can’t find my Handspring data.”
“Did you re-set?”
“Yes. Nothing’s there.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just took the batteries out and then put them back in.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did. So what?”
“That was royally stupid.” Craig reserved these comments for when I’d truly done harebrained things, like when I spilled coffee on my laptop and insisted on turning it on to see if it would still work. Like when I shut off my Norton Anti-Virus to avoid those pain-in-the-ass popups—for six months. But this was different. I had simply taken the batteries out of my PDA. What was the harm in that?
Apparently I’d discovered the technological way to give my PDA a karate chop in the carotid artery. I had taken out the batteries for longer than the three minutes its little brain could survive.
“Yep,” Craig said, “You’re screwed. That was stupid, but that’s why you sync up your data.” I swallowed hard and remained silent.
“Oh no,” Craig said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You never did?”
“I did! A long time ago. I just…well.”
“I thought I told you…”
“I know you did.”
“How could you?”
“Who’s freakin’ data is this? Yours or mine?”
“I can’t believe you did this.”
“Do I need to remind you, Craig, no one has died.”
That wasn’t entirely true. My Handspring and I have shared a very close relationship. It had gotten me to job interviews, through meetings and holiday card campaigns. Computers had crashed on me within the four years we’d been together, a car had been totaled, my address had changed three times, and yet I still had my trusty Handspring. My memory. My Rolodex. My most reliable friend. I had unwittingly put it to sleep.