
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 28, 1994                   TAG: 9403290003
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHEN COMPUTER'S ON BLINK, I DON'T HANG AROUND|

The main reason I don't read The Wall Street Journal a lot is that it regularly has these stories that support my feeling that I'm not normal.

It's not easy to ignore The Journal, though, and recently the executive editor of this very newspaper left a section of it in my mailbox.

(Yes, well, of course, semi-hysterical, semi-retired reporters have mailboxes. Otherwise, they wouldn't have any place to keep their coffee cups.)

With the usual fine newspapering you find in The Journal, reporter William H. Bulkeley developed the theme that men like to play around with their computers when there is trouble, while women run off immediately and ask somebody for help.

There it goes again, Trevor,

You ought to see me run for help when something happens to my computer. There are these aces at the office who leave messages saying that if I seem to be having trouble at home with my computer, I am to be told they are visiting a sick friend in the Netherlands and won't be back until 1996.

I mean, when something goes wrong, I don't fool around. I get help. If that's not masculine, there's nothing I can do about it.

The Journal had a real husand and wife to illustrate. They restore art, and both of them are experts in art history, chemistry and materials science. Oh. They also are restoring their 1870 mansard-roofed house in Somerset, Mass.

This information made me feel inadequate, never mind abnormal.

This guy is reported to be in love with his computer and enjoys trying to make it work right. His wife does a little word-processing on it and then gets away from the thing.

I'm not in love with my computer and like the lady from Somerset, I just do a little word-processing on it now and again. I can't figure out how to use the check-balancing stuff somebody put in there.

The story says there is a theory that indicates, although I am a widely known male chauvinist hawg, I think with the right side of my brain - which, you guessed it, pal, is what females are supposed to do.

Using this side of your brain is supposed to make you emotional, instead of analytical.

It would seem that if I'm all that emotional, I might feel something for my computer. But nothing is there.

In the meantime, let me say that my wife - who wouldn't touch a computer - would kill for a mansard-roofed house she could restore.

by CNB