XP Myself

In my last job, I lived under the constant fear that my employer would find out the truth about my internet behavior, namely, that they were paying me a good deal of money to surf the web all day. And I was always indignant about this, like, ‘How dare they put me under this constant stress? I’m practically in tears every day trying to read through the McSweeney’s archives, and by the time I get to Maud Newton, I’m an utter mess. You got that report done? Pfft.’

Anyhoo, one morning I’m surfing the web instead of working, and all of a sudden the mouse cursor decides it doesn’t want to go where I tell it, so I start shaking the mouse violently and making a sound like a feral cat for good measure. But still, the gdamned cursor still just keeps going it’s own little happy direction, and then it closes my browser! Like really, goes to the top right and clicks the ‘x’ and I’m like, you little fuckling, I wasn’t done reading The Onion!

And then the cursor goes to windows explorer and it opens up a program and another and all of a sudden there are like 7 cascading programs like the kaleidoscope of digital hell, and I make my feral cat noise again and run to Kevin, our graphics guy, and in breathy desperation, gasp,

‘Is it possible for the IT department to remotely take over our computers?’

‘Oh yeah. That’s the beauty of XP.’

And I screamed.

I ran back to my office, hurdling over mid-manager and dodging administrative assistants, fully prepared to rip all the power cords from the wall, and half expecting that even without power they could still keep my machine on and open my browser history file.

But I get to my desk and there’s no movement on the computer screen. I poke at the mouse, as though it were a corpse about to spring to life and scream at me. All the programs were closed and it’s just my desktop wallpaper, a photo of my wife and two children, smiling back at me, but I can tell what they’re thinking, and what they are thinking, my friend is, ‘We know you won’t do something stupid like read Rocketpack all day and lose your job and have us fall into the public welfare,’ and I whisper quietly to the desktop photo, tears welling in my eyes, ‘I’m sorry, children!’

And it’s calm and quiet, like that scene of the lake in Deliverance, and as I imagine the lifeless hand about to surface I feel a hand upon my shoulder, and I pee myself a little, or a lot, it doesn’t matter.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘They know where I’ve been!’

‘But dude, they’ve always been able to track where you go.’

‘I know, but NOT RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!’

‘Well, maybe you should do a little more work and a little less Modern Humorist.’

And following the obligatory second of sitcom silence, we both break out into laughter, and now the tears rolling from my eyes are sweet and precious. And now I take control of my mouse, and I open up a word file in one window and Fazed in the other, and the world is good again, and the next time IT takes over my computer again, I’ll be ready.

Emotionally.