It was one of those moments

when you pray fervently for God to rewind the tape and erase what just

happened.

Please, oh please, God, I'll

try to be a better person. Please, just this once, before it's too late,

before anyone notices. Back up the universe 30 seconds and give me another

chance.

But whether it's a beloved

pet darting into traffic or a split second's inattention that brought

broom handle and favorite pottery into collision, nothing can change what

has already happened.

I had my old faithful laptop

on the counter at our daughter Jean's house as I edited some manuscripts

on the table nearby. As I rolled between counter and table, the arm of

the desk chair must have caught the modem cord.

The crash behind me meant only

one thing: My trusty Toshiba had fallen to the floor. With the hard drive

running. Face down. Open.

Now to understand why I beseeched

God to rewind time, you have to understand what my computer means to me.

I have a terrible memory, and remember only what I write down. As nurses

say: If it wasn't charted, it didn't happen. If I don't capture a trip

or a thought in writing, it didn't happen.

My computer is my memory.

It is to a memory-impaired person almost what a seeing-eye dog is to a

vision-impaired person, at least to this one.

And more than that, it imposes

structure on my madly disorganized life. What did I spend on office supplies

last year? When did I upgrade my PC? What did the neighbors' daughter

name her new baby? How am I related to the sender of this family-history

question?

My whole life is in there.

My checkbook. My Visa account and years of spending history. Records of

letters both in and out, and years of invoices.

My hard-earned genealogy: The

computer not only retrieves information from the Internet, but keeps it

corralled and organized in a way that would be unthinkable by hand.

And by having both a desktop

and a notebook, I've got backups, yet I can carry it all with me. In Europe,

on a river, at a meeting: My database of nearly 500 names and addresses

is at hand, as well as a means to connect with friends and family around

the world.

And there are birthdays, passwords,

our CD collection, Christmas gift ideas, downloaded newsletters, dozens

of low-fat recipes. ...

Well, miraculously, the Toshiba

was still alive, barely. Obviously the hard drive had taken a bad hit

and Brian ­ recently elevated to Most Favored status, both as a son-in-law

and as a computer guru ­ advised that I copy to floppies everything

I could before it rattled its last. Formatting spare diskettes, he passed

them to me as I filled them with all the data I could retrieve.

I was on the verge of tears

for several days, when an e-mail from Dave (via Brian's computer) urged

me to go ahead and buy a new laptop, since I was already thinking about

doing just that. The Toshiba was three years old; its 1.5-GB hard drive

and 32-MB RAM were already packed out and required frequent defragging.

Besides, I had Brian's expertise

at hand to do the shopping and get it organized as I wanted it.

I should mention that Jean

and Brian's household could be a poster child for The Wired Family. Brian

­ an IT manager for a telecommunications company ­ has, of course,

a monster computer that can do anything, and at lightning speed. Jean's

is almost new, and the kids inherited their parents' previous machines,

not too shabby in themselves.

When Jean was essentially bedridden

with back problems (I was with her for half of March following her surgery),

Brian went out and bought her a Compaq Presario with every conceivable

bell and whistle. Excuse me for not remembering the technical terms ­

enough that I'm green with envy ­ but all their systems are linked

together, and with a dedicated phone line, they can be connected with

the Internet all day. All night. All the time.

This is by no means frivolous,

I hasten to add. Jean's home-schooling those kids, and a huge amount of

their lessons are either on CD-ROM or downloaded from educational sources

on the Web. Computers and the Internet are as routine to her children's

schooling as chalk and blackboards were to mine.

But wait, there's more. Jean's

connection is wireless. Anywhere around the house ­ upstairs, on

the sofa, in the backyard ­ she can be online. Having the entire

world at her fingertips is as easy for her as clicking open a program

is for the rest of us.

So. Resolutely, I turned my

back on my dearest-friend-since-the-dog-died and began the grueling process

of researching what I needed and where to get the best buy. That sentence

answers the question: With a rebate plus the assurance of stores nearby,

a well-known chain offered the best deal.

I too went for a Presario,

with a 15-GB hard drive and 128 MB of RAM. It's awesome, it really is,

although I didn't really fall in love with it until I'd installed all

my programs and got things looking slightly familiar again. I'm actually

warming to Windows ME and Word 2000. High praise from one who converted

from a DOS word processor only a year ago.

And although it's a long shot,

I'm hoping Brian can pull off a miracle and find parts to resuscitate

the Toshiba. Hard to give up on an old friend, and I just know it's worth

more as a computer ­ albeit a slow one ­ than as a doorstop.

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