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About This Poem
And People Ask Why I Don't Take a Class
My vacant stare was sure to be
a giveaway to anyone that saw . . .
I was a Pilgrim there to the land of techno-jargon,
of icons, Help instructions meaning nothing,
and a world of young and savvy operators.
Our teacher wasn’t there.
Certain that the worksheet explaining all the basics
would be a breeze for us to carry out,
he’d arrogantly left the room
and left the lot of us to the mercy of
a keyboard and computer.
I looked up from his worksheet
to a screen that stared right back at me,
awaiting my commands.
I was on the starting path to what is often called
the Super Highway,
and my boarding pass, tuition to the class,
was non-refundable.
Overwhelmed, I started out. Then I hit a rut
and didn’t have a clue what next to do.
My learning peers already seemed to know
the route quite well.
Some, in fact, were calling it a day
while I stayed on, ashamed to bother
any of the others there for help.
I looked around the room, my tired brain
a hot plate in the midst of younger minds
with the speed of ovens made for microwave.
Perhaps they’d all conspired to put
the older lady at unease.
It seemed the more I tried to understand,
the more pathetically off course I’d go. . .
Till finally (longing for a time when
“cut and paste” implied the use of scissors),
I got up from my seat and left behind
the self-instructing worksheet which
that egghead teacher said would be “a cinch.”
Two big words were scrawled across the top
of its first page, two big words in red,
written with the one tool I could trust:
SCREW IT.
For Natalie Whitlock's
"Talkin' Technology" Contest
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