A Letter to Our Laptop

To Our Laptop:

First off, I apologize for not caring enough about you to give you a real name.  You’ve been very good to my wife and me ever since I bought you 2 1/2 to 3 years ago for $600.  You may have been born in a Dell factory but you lived your life with us.  When I first bought you, you were a gift to my then-fiancee, who needed a computer of her own for her schoolwork.  I surprised her by turning  you on and leaving it on her desk with the lights out.  You were very helpful to her doing well in nursing school, well enough to earn a scholarship in her final semester, and for her graduation.  And since we’ve been married, you’ve been our constant bedside companion, giving us laughs as we watched TV on the Internet through you in our bed.

But today, you did something you never did before.  Or at least, allowed something to happen.  I checked my e-mail today, and found that some of the mail that I did not send was returned to me.  I did not send any mail, I thought.  I checked my sent mail folder and it turns out that I sent out spam mail in 4 separate e-mails, each one sent to several people with whom I’ve shared at least one e-mail correspondence.  I e-mailed a hotel in Crete Island of Greece.  I e-mailed an acquaintance I had from college.  I even e-mailed the pastor who married us!  Why did you allow this to happen?  Were you sick?

I know you’ve been getting more problems as you got older.  Your battery is pretty much worthless, as it drains like a sieve.  Your touchpad will jump the pointer from one side of the screen to the other, grabbing one thing and putting it where it doesn’t belong.  You’re slow as a turtle being blocked by the Snail Pride parade.  And your flip-up screen is hanging on exposed hinges.  I’ve reformatted you a few times already but at this point, doing it once more only seems like a temporary solution.  I know what you got under the hood and you should still be able to do your job, but maybe we abused you a bit too much.  Like Dusty Baker and his handling of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, maybe I should have given you more rest.

I just finished running some free anti-virus and anti-malware programs, and I found some infected files.  Hopefully those files were the reason why you allowed spam to be sent from my e-mail account, and that it will not happen again.  Even so, I think it’s time we remove you from your duties.  You will still be used, but will not be relied on as our main computer.  All I ask is that you stay in the game for us for two more weeks.  I have an important exam coming up, and I will not have time to back up your data until I take my exam.  So, just two weeks.  I know you can do it.  If you pull through, it will be easy street for you as a part-time, on-call computer.  I believe in you.