Heloise, Hector, and Other Perfect Valentine's Day Couples

                Today is Valentine’s Day, and I am very salty.  Not because it’s Valentine’s Day—I don’t have anything against a holiday to celebrate love.  I know it’s just a made-up holiday, a fabrication of the escort industry to up sales, but I think that in a lot of cases, it’s not a bad idea to have a day to tell the person you love that you love him or her.

                I’m salty because of my computer, again.  If you read the Beef Thoughts on a regular basis, you know that my computer and I have a hate-hate (but interdependent) relationship.  We have kind of a deal going, my computer and I: she provides me with music to drown out my roommate, and I don’t leave her on all night.  She lets me spend time perusing my Ohio State message boards, and I promise not to use her for homework.  I buy her expensive new fans to keep her cool and call her parents every couple months, and she lets me check my e-mail and use instant messenger.

                This arrangement works out fine until it becomes “that time of the quarter”.  Then she throws fits—sometimes playing games, hiding the things that normally I can just ask for, sometimes throwing them out entirely.  She threatens to break up with me for good, pretends to be asleep when all I want to do is talk, and even when I give her a few days to get over it she holds a grudge against me.

                Why?  I don’t know.  The two most mysterious forces in this universe are computers and women.  The stereotype is, women are unpredictable, mercurial, and emotional.  We think of computers as logical, solvable, objective—we even use the phrase computer-like­ to describe somebody who rarely shows emotion.

                Not my computer though.  She is a special breed.  She is what keeps e-Machines on speed dial on my cell phone.  The internet went down last Sunday, and everybody in our dorm was panicked—how will we last five hours without AIM?  Not ol’ Beefster.  Five hours is nothing.  My computer has left me for weeks at a time, only to show up again fresh as new.  She doesn’t say a word about what happened (shoot, she pretends like she doesn’t remember anything) and I just start the relationship over again.

                But early that afternoon, order was restored.  The internet drug was back on, and all of Drackett Tower (and probably all of the nation’s largest campus) made sure they were getting their fix.  Except for Beef, of course.  Heloise (that’s her name) was still holding out on me.

                So I called our friendly and clueless help desk at 292-HELP.  We spent about an hour together in counseling, trying to convince Heloise that everything would be okay.  She’d let me look at our old pictures and listen to our favorite songs, but she didn’t want me on the internet.  Maybe she was worried that I’d go looking for somebody else, somebody younger and newer and better looking than her (she’s right).  

                So when counseling didn’t work, our friendly and clueless help desk at 292-HELP said they would send somebody over, and not to leave the room.  Well this was fine for a couple hours, as I watched our Buckeyes rain threes on Illinois like a Seattle winter.  But then the game ended, and then lunch ended, and then I even did my homework, and still there was no somebody.

                “Hello this is the help desk, how may I help you?”

                “You guys tried to help me fix Heloise, and then when you couldn’t, you said you’d send somebody over.  I was just wondering if anybody was on their way.”

                “Um, our technician—we’re not sure where he is, he left.”

                Monday, a technician showed up.  I was watching Super Bowl highlights on our (my) TV.  He looked at the screen as though I was watching a tape of an Amish barn-raising.  He had on old-school Converse shoes, an army-issued canvas jacket, dark girlish unkempt hair, those suddenly fashionable black rimmed nerd glasses, and patches of bands that nobody has ever heard of (and that is why they’re cool).  If this young man had any purpose on this planet, it was to fix computers and eat the vegetables I don’t like.

                Wrong.  An hour with Heloise, a jump drive, asking me to enter and re-enter my password, and some decidedly uncreative swearing had no effect on her.  For all her faults, Heloise is not going to open up to just anybody.  I was told that a full-time staff (read: an adult who has washed his hair within the past 72 hours) would need to UN-authenticate my Heloise from the list, and then when I tried to log in the next time, she would be ready and willing.

                False.  It was 9:32 on Valentine’s Day when I tried to make amends with her, and she was having none of it.  I called our friendly and clueless help desk at 292-HELP, and spent five minutes recapping the last hours of our relationship.  Then our friendly and clueless help desk representative spent fifteen minutes asking me why Heloise wasn’t working

                I don’t know why she isn’t working.  That is your job, Hector.

                “Well I don’t see any reason she isn’t working.  It says here that you were UN-authenticated at 8:03 this morning.  Let me go talk to somebody and I’ll call you back, okay?”

                “Okay Hector.”

                It’s been 45 minutes, and nobody from the friendly and clueless help desk at 292-HELP has made Hector (that’s what I’m calling our phone from now on) ring.  I’m typing this on Heloise, and even though she is pretending not to pay attention, she is taking in every word, recording my virtues and vices on her Beef Table.  You can guess which column has more rows.

                I would be remiss to go without saying something about St. Valentine’s Day.  In my experience, there are three general reactions to this holiday: over-the-top, mushy love poems, songs, jewelry, candy, and flowers; cynical, indifferent, holier-than-thou dismissal; and jealous, lonely, sad, and heart-broken (four if you count panicked, terrified, rushed, last-minute gift buying).  And of all of them, if I had to pick just one, I really think I would pick the first.  None are particularly appealing when viewed from the outside, but if you’re going to have a fault, why not have a fault that is based on something genuine and real (even if its expression is sometimes superficial and fake)?

                That’s why I bought Heloise a special gift.  She doesn’t know about it yet, and I don’t want to give the secret away…let’s just say that she has kind of a “thing” for being tied up and put in a box, and that she LOVES to travel, and that her favorite place to get rejuvenated is back in her hometown of Houston, and I may have spent some time booking her a little trip this morning over the phone. 

                She’ll come back as good as new, and let me do whatever I want again.  Things will be just like they used to be, when we first met, before she caught that unsightly virus. 

As for the Beefster, I’ll be spending Valentine’s Day on a bus.  Of my sixteen waking hours each day, normally three or four are spent in my room.  But Valentine’s is a special day, and the roomy has put in a request that he and the special lady have sole domain of 514 this evening, putting that figure closer to two hours. 

Yeah, it will mean having to relocate to our 90 degree library and killing time riding North Campus Loop, but I am a romantic at heart—who am I to deny a young man desperately and hopelessly in love, who really really wants to get laid?

 At least I won’t have to spend any more time with that b---- Heloise.

 

Ols: If you're going to dump him, at least do it BEFORE he buys you a gift.

           

 

  

the rest of the thoughts            2.14.05