A Mouse Tale

It was some time in the early 90s while working at the Kennedy Space Center that I heard a bunch of commotion coming out of the engineering office. When I went to see what the excitement was, one of them said, “It’s the World Wide Web!”

Needless to say, I didn’t quite understand the magnitude of this statement, but the irony is not lost on me that although I was part of the generation that was on the forefront of this technology, I sometimes still need help getting on Hulu.

A favorite memory of that era has me as one of the first in our group to use a newfangled gadget called the “Mouse.” Up until then, every single command on every computer we were using required keystrokes to do even the simplest task.

I was asked to teach a visiting scientist from Sweden how to use this new gadget. He and I sat shoulder to shoulder in my tiny cubicle staring at the image on my flickering monitor.

“First, you click here,” I said as I dragged the Mouse across the mouse pad, “And then you click there.”

He put his hand on my arm and looked at me quizzically, saying, “What means click?”

Yet, after taking courses in advanced FORTRAN, COBOL and Assembler — the computer languages that ran those computers — I sometimes still have to enlist the help of a family member to stop our Alexa from flashing yellow.

I really don’t mind being part of the old school generation who just may have forgotten more about computers than most folks will ever know about them.

And, I kind of love the fact that at my recent high school reunion hardly anyone had their nose buried in their cell phone. Everyone was simply enjoying connecting with each other, in person, old school style.