Computer Dating

The cursor blinked in the corner of the screen like an empty, broken heart. When the person at the keyboard pressed the keys he danced with the movements of letters, numbers and punctuation marks. He was happy to be moving across the white fields of someone’s literary thoughts. The little flashing bar especially liked the dancing when the writer was a poet in love.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate…
                                                 William Shakespeare

For the cursor this was love, a romantic interlude into the blissful world of real relationships.

I know what you are thinking, the cursor is just a flash on the screen to tell the writer where his words lie on the screen. How insensitive of you. Do you not think that our little blinking buddy doesn’t react to our words of love? Does he not smile when you are happy and frown when you are sad? Do your letters not become big when you press the Caps Lock button?

Bob, my magical, bouncing cursor shares everything I write about. He happily blinks when I put him through the letters of my romantic stories, poems, and mushy emails. The more excited I get the brighter he winks. Some nights when I can’t find anything to write about I watch as his secret messages pulsate on my screen… and one night he asked me if I would please download a fireplace screen saver so him and Irene, the computer generated icon, could have a romantic evening of their own.

This started a conversation between the two of us and I had to ask him, being a somewhat romantic myself, what else he had planned for Irene. This is where I blushed, downloaded the fireplace screensaver and turned the computer off. The next morning, when I turned on the computer my friend Bob was glowing brighter than ever and one of my icons, I’m sure of it, winked at me.

Some things should stay between man and his magical, bouncing cursor named Bob but I thought I would share his one moment of cyber happiness… so I sat back and let my cursor dance across my screen under his own power and here is what he wrote…

The computer was in the standby mode. It was as dark as a summer, cloud-covered night until the fifteen minute waiting period brought the computer fireplace to a nice steady burn. I cracked open a bottle of the Milkman’s finest bottle of Wite-Out and we were intoxicated by the fumes alone. I held Irene close. Her kilobytes felt like air in my hands. I blinked, winked and strobed like a real man in love. Her body was like a floppy; blank, waiting for me to imprint my data on her and that I wanted more than anything. With my pulsating electric current I flashed out the words to the feelings that real humans want to hear…”I Love You, Irene” was more than just a blip on her metallic disc. We kissed; it was true love and the next thing I remember I was floating once again upon the white screen of a blank document screen and Irene was just a shortcut to my computerized heart. I knew I experienced what humans call “afterglow“.

Maybe it is a good thing that William Shakespeare never had the opportunity to use a keyboard. Can you imagine how many Quill pens refused to write when they discovered they were in the hands of a love-sick puppy and not the master himself.