For Thursday, July 15, 1999 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 718 words

College prep?

Mary Ann Williams moved her belongings into her college dorm room over the weekend. Her mother helped her hang her clothes and posters, while dad carried boxes of books from the car, and her little brother set up Mary's new computer.

When the room was in order, the family kissed Mary good-bye and drove off. They had a long road ahead of them. Mary sat at the corner of her bed and listened to the silence. It was Sunday afternoon. Apparently, she was the first to move in because the building was empty.

She got up and walked twice around the halls. "Hello? Hello?" she called like a song. "Anybody home?" No one. She returned to her room. She pulled down her new copy of The Bible According to Einstein. She picked up from her bookmark, a chapter called "Genesis III: Ultra-Super-Symmetry Destruction."

The phone rang, next door. Mary listened through the wall. It rang four times, then the answering machine said, "Hello, this is Mffmfmff, please leave a message after the tone." Mary couldn't make out the name.

Beep. Click. The caller didn't leave a message.

Just then Mary realized she'd forgotten to pack her own phone. It was on her bedroom floor back home. She'd unpacked it to call her best friend Liz one last time. "Darn it."

What could she do? Email! Of course. Contact mom and dad and have them FedEx it. She sat down at the new computer that dad bought for her three days ago.

She turned it on. The screen stayed black and a message said:

"Non-system disk or disk error.

Replace and strike any key when ready."

Mary panicked. She didn't know what the message meant. She'd never been trained on this in high school keyboarding, or even in word-processing class. She hit some keys but nothing happened.

She picked up the system manual, as thick as Einstein, but didn't know where to look inside. She flipped through the contents, but every chapter seemed the same. The only trick she knew was one her friend Liz taught her in Internet-surfing class. Her friend said it would fix anything, so Mary hit Control-Alt-Delete. The computer restarted, whirred and clicked, and gave the same error message. She tried it a few more times and gave up.

Now instead of reading Einstein's Bible she curled up with her computer manual. Two hours later she was no closer to the truth. On the verge of tears, she decided to go find a payphone in the dark. Just then she heard the door next door open and close.

Mary walked down the hall and knocked on her neighbor's door. It was opened by a girl wearing jogging sweats. "Hi!" she said. "I'm Muffy Fumpf. You must be Mary. The R.A. said you were coming in today."

"Yeah. Hi," said Mary, relieved to find a friendly face. "Do you know anything about computers?"

"Sure," said Muffy. "I took all the computer classes offered by my high school -- keyboarding, word-processing, keyboarding…oh, I said that one already. Why? What's the problem?"

Mary led Muffy to her black screen. "Hmm," said Muffy. "Did you try this?" Muffy hit Control-Alt-Delete. The system restarted back to the error. "Well, you are welcome to use my computer that my grandfather gave me, but it only uses those big disks. You know, the floppy ones."

Muffy reached down and pushed the eject button on Mary's computer and popped a 3.5-inch diskette out of the A Drive. "It can't use these newer small disks."

"Oh, well, forget it," said Mary. "I was just going to email my folks and have them ship me my phone."

"Email. Cool," said Muffy. "You'll have to let me try it. We emailed the president once for an advanced high school project."

"I will," said Mary, "but email won't work without a phone and, I think, an antenna."

"Really?" said Muffy. "Gosh. The school says you also need to hook your computer up to the campus lamb before it will work."

"The lamb? What is the lamb?"

"Maybe it's wham. Yes, I think it's the wham. Wide-Area something-or-other. Anyhow, what's your major?"

"Physics," said Mary. "How about you?"

"Calculus," said Muffy, "with a minor in communications."

"Swell. I am so ready for college."

"Yeah, me, too," said Muffy.