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

DATE: MONDAY, July 17, 1995                   TAG: 9507180031
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FAT FINGERS GET IN WAY OF MY TECHNICAL PROWESS

Boy. You have to feel sorry for a bunch of malletheads like that.

O I can program my VC with boldness, speed and confidence. I wish I could watch myself doing it.

Actually, some of my neighbors have asked if they could come over and watch. I like to be nice but I'm too private a person for that.

And just in case any of you ignorant VCR owners are thinking that I might be available for seminars in a motel ballroom somewhere, forget it.

Unless, of course, you're willing to pay for your own lunch and put some money up front to help me pay for this foot medicine I'm taking.

You don't get good enough not to have bad days, though. Sometimes I program shows that don't exist yet - which is easy to do if you punch 2095 into the machine instead of 1995.

These mistakes are caused by the dreaded Fat-Finger Syndrome. I have the same trouble with calculators, push-button phones, computer keyboards and microwave ovens.

(Wow. You talk about a family in crisis, you should have been there the morning I programmed 30 minutes for three strips of bacon.

(And there was the memorable time I cooked the instant grits for 10 minutes.

(If I worked a computer in your favorite bank you shouldn't be surprised to find your life's savings transferred to a bank in Bremen, Germany, under the name of Horst Oberfhuister.)

Once, suffering from the Fat-Finger Syndrome, I taped a movie that had this climax in which the heroine was thrown down an elevator shaft by the villain. Several people were watching when it dissolved into snow just as the heroine took the plunge.

I knew what I had done wrong. The movie was two hours long and I had programmed an hour and 50 minutes. I gave a learned explanation to the people who were watching but they snarled and marched out into the night.

Among those who went off into the night not knowing what happened to the heroine were my youngest daughter and only-begotten son.

It was a long time before they would return my phone calls and some of the non-relatives still avoid me down at the shopping center.

You'll have to excuse me now. I'm having trouble with my memory-dialing phone that I programmed.

I'm tired of punching a Pearisburg number and getting this hotel in Paris.