Ode to a Computer.

Well, not really an ode. More like a story.

This is a story about a stalwart, erstwhile companion of mine. The one functional piece of equipment that few students or pastors do without -- a laptop computer. I know pastors who can dial up NASA with their computers and still don't know the names of the 12 minor prophets. These people annoy me.

They especially annoy me when I meet them somewhere, and they fire up their shiny, new, light-as-a-feather MacBook and look over at what I'm packing. Then, their eyes bug up out of their heads and they begin to laugh. At my computer. It doesn't matter that while they were burning out their retinas D-and-D'ing through their undergraduate degrees I was busting ass and knuckles as a nightclub bouncer. It suddenly doesn't matter that my two strong healthy children immediately put their poor irradiated testes to shame in an awesome display of virility (hang on, I'm leading up to something....)

All that matters is that my laptop was new -- NEW -- in 2000. Maybe early 2001. HP Pavilion NP1510 (or something like that).

(snort, giggle.)

Yes, my trusty typepad came fully equipped top-of-the-line the year I graduated high school. Windows Millenium Edition.

(chuckle, guffaw.)

It has an amazing 700-something megahertz processor. It has a whopping 9 gig hard drive.

(knee slap, wipe eyes.)

It also weighs somewhere in the neighbourhood of 18 pounds when it, cables, and cards are added into my bag for a presentation.

Now, I mean, it's not that bad. My older brother -- who bought it used before me -- updated it to Windows XP and for all I know did whatever voodoo he does with computers and linked it directly to the ISS. I haven't the foggiest clue.

What I do know is that this (big) little computer has saved my butt. Fighting off some depression when I was finishing my undergrad, I couldn't -- read "could.absolutely.not" -- sit down at my desktop computer and do any work. So I coerced my brother into selling it to me. Against his better judgement.

"It's slow," he said. "Actually, it's worse than slow. It's decrepit. If it was a little old lady, Boy scouts wouldn't even help it across the street. They'd call an ambulance."

"And," he said, "it's ugly. Actually, it's worse than ugly. The letters on its keys are rubbing off. The screen has a couple of weak spots. It's so ugly that if it was a kid at school, its parents would have to ask someone to bully it just so it'd get the attention."

But I persisted, and one day brought it home in a fancy case with all its wordly belongings. And put it right to work. I bought it in about February, I think, and by the end of May it had over 50 000 words of my original work in its little memory banks.

That (big) little computer was the best money I ever spent. On it went the first pictures of my son. Its wallpaper has almost continuously been some picture of my family. Except once, when before a presentation a fellow student pointed out that while a booby shot of my wife was fine for my computer, I probably shouldn't share it with others. That little computer was all that I brought with me to Saskatoon when I came here to start my MDiv.

(ooooooh baby!)

And it worked exceptionally well, its key features being that it was small and portable. I could, and did, work at the kitchen table, in the chair beside the crib as I watched our baby sleep, and in bed as I watched my beloved sleep. I had a little desk that was variously in the bedroom, baby's room, and living room (which was the sum total of rooms in our apartment, except for the bathroom and laundry room), but it was rarely there.

I bought a flash drive, which almost doubled my hard drive space. It was a heady experience. Suddenly, there was a home for my thousands of baby pictures! I basked in the glory of a slightly faster computer.

Then my dad came to visit. My dad is the original techie. My brother gets it from him; I'm fairly certain that my dad, somewhere, has the same computer they launched Sputnik with. We were having a wonderful visit, then somehow things got off kilter.

He spied something lurking in the corner of our living room. He looked at it the same way he'd look at a pile of pornography featuring sexual acts with sheep.

"WHAT," he said, "IS THAT?"

I explained to him that that was my computer. He looked for a moment like he could not, in fact, believe that I had sprung from his loins. Genetics and appearance indicating otherwise, he resigned himself to the fact that his youngest son and heir was, in fact, a complete ignoramus when it came to the finer points of computer ownership.

My biologist dad looked at me like I'd just told him I was a young-earth creationist. He extended a hand over my shoulders in a gesture not unlike a doctor offering up a hopeful course of treatment. "We'll see what we can about that, son," he told me.

Sure enough, by his next visit, he'd upgraded his own computer. Now, I've seen this computer. This computer bears as much kinship to my laptop as I do to the entire pantheon of Rhodes scholars. They share a kind of basic computer-ly shape; that's it. But he brought me his 'old' computer.

Three times the processor speed. Twenty times the harddrive space. I was now current. My old laptop was placed into its case and languished until such time as it was needed to be the platform for a presentation at class.

Then I began my congregational internship in Calgary, and found myself in need of a computer. There, on my desk, my old laptop sat proudly.

Well, somewhat proudly. 15-year-old confirmation students would bring their friends from school to gawk at it: "my mom told me we used to have a computer like this" they would whisper to each other, before whipping out their iPods and taking pictures of it for posterity.

And then back for my senior year of Seminary. I've been feeling a little low, lately, and I found myself experience some...well, let's call it envy. Get the sin right. Laptop envy.

I've been watching shiny new netbooks come around the Sem. I see them on the bus. Nice. So, I thought I'd get one. Did get one. Little 2.3 pound package with more computing power than my lumping desktop at home.

Twenty minutes outside of the freakin' box and two keys broke. Two keys broke! What was that all about? So I spent part of the night on my old laptop, looking for other possibilities, and returned the offending piece of plastic the next day. Would I like to replace it? they asked. Hah! Replace it? Replace what? Certainly, not my old laptop. Does one replace a Monet with some garish postmodernist? Does one replace a 1945 Willys Military Special with some gawdoffal 2010 Grand Liberty Cherokee froufroufrafra that brews your Starbucks as you drive? I don't THINK so.

So my old laptop is back at the top of its food chain. Yes, it's old. Yes, it's ugly. But its keys are tenacious, even if not easily readable. 9 years combined of undergraduate and Masters studies quickly dispelled me of the need to look at the keyboard when I type. It's been dropped. Toddlers have used it to stand upon to reach a book in the bookshelf, and it lived to tell the tale.

To some people, it's just a computer, to be replaced as necessary. But to me, that laptop is a witness, a small piece of stability -- in my world of constant moving and changing.

If offered, I'll accept a newer one. But never a replacement.