Start your story with:
“Oh, quit worrying. If fish had
feet, they’d be mice.”
Approx 5,352 words
Fish and Mice
©2004 by W. E. Lopez
“Oh, quit worrying,” Grandma Ellis said. “If fish had feet, they’d be mice.”
Nine year old Donna glanced away from the ice-skaters in their pretty costumes on the television long enough to ask, “What’s that supposed to mean, Grandma?”
“When you find out, Dumpling, be sure to let me know. I’ve been married to your grandma forty years and I’ll bet I’ve heard her say that a million times. I still don’t know what it means.” Henry Ellis went back to opening his mail and complaining again about the late charges on most of his bills.
“It means,” Grandma Ellis said, “just because you are wishing something to be so doesn’t make it true. When you retired, Hank, it was your idea for us to buy a motorhome and see the sights while we could still enjoy them. You have to admit, Bill does a wonderful job forwarding our mail to us, but since he only sends the mail once each week, there is a built in delay between the time our statement is mailed from the bank and he mails it to us. It can’t be helped.”
“If you had a computer,” Donna said, “you could check your statements online like daddy does, and even pay them from your bank account without waiting for snail mail.” Donna looked smug, her blue eyes sparkling beneath the pigtails of her dirty blonde hair.
“That might be so, chile,” Henry said, “but you were born into the computer age. Your grandma and I are just too old for cybering. Is that what you squeaks call it? Cybering?”
“Geeks,” Donna corrected. “Really fanatic computer hobbyists are called geeks, grandpa, or nerds, or dweebs. Not squeaks.”
“Squeaks I said and squeaks I meant,” Henry Ellis insisted. “You can call them geeks, or nerds, or dweebs, but to your grandma and me, they’re still pip-squeaks.” He chuckled.
“Okay, at least a
hundred times I’ve thought about getting a computer, but every time I see the
sales at
Henry picked up a recent flyer from the newspaper. “Look at this,” he said. “1.8 GHZ. What the heck is that? I thought GHZ was some sort of drug sold at wild parties. Do you mean to tell me 1.8 doses of drugs are included when you buy the computer? What do they do with the other two-tenths of a dose? No wonder this younger generation is always spaced out!”
It was Donna’s turn to chuckle. “No, Grandpa, 1.8 GHZ refers to the clock speed of the CPU, or central processing unit. GHZ is the abbreviation for giga-hertz, or billion cycles per second. That’s pretty fast, but not really smoking. It would definitely be adequate for the average home user; only serious gamers or businesses running large accounting databases or graphics applications need CPU’s that run faster. My computer is practically ancient, it only runs at 750 MHZ, but I get all my school work done on it.” Donna was proud to show off what she knew about computers and share her knowledge with her grandparents. She left the television and moved to sit on the hassock where Grandpa Ellis was resting his outstretched legs.
“I won’t say I haven’t been interested. At the last RV park we stayed in, Tom and Dotty Maxwell had a computer and said they loved the way they could keep in touch with their family and even see pictures and videos of the grandkids.”
“I thought Dotty’s i-Mac was pretty, the emerald green color reminded me of Dorothy in the Land of Oz. It certainly suited Dotty.” Hazel Ellis smiled briefly and went back to the doilley she was knitting. She had knitted items placed throughout the motorhome and it was obviously a hobby she enjoyed.
“Oh, my gawd!” Donna exclaimed. “Don’t even think about a Macintosh,” Donna said.
“What’s wrong with them,” grandpa asked? “Tom said he loved his Macintosh because they were immune to viruses and worms, things that seem to bother so many other computer owners.”
“They’re not immune, grandpa, they’re mostly ignored. Viruses are malicious code written by hackers, people who get their fun making life tough on other people. If you want to play a dirty trick on someone, would you target a thousand people, or would you target a million people?”
“What’s the difference, Dumpling?”
“Well, say there
are a hundred million computer users in
“I see what you mean; more bang for your buck, more chuckles for your time and effort.”
“Exactly, grandpa, besides, there are several big anti-virus companies who will give you free anti-virus software for a Windows computer, but you’ll probably have to buy special software to run on a Macintosh or Linux computer.”
“Free? Why ever for?”
“Just business,” grandpa. “Like Ford will give you a free test drive and hope you’ll buy the car if you like it. Then there’s always economy of scale, that’s what the third-party distributors count on.”
“Economy of scale, how did you ever get involved with fancy notions of economics, Donna,” Hazel asked?
“You forget, grandma, daddy works in the small business department at the bank. I’ve heard him discuss it with mom lots of times. But daddy isn’t really a geek, and neither am I. If I need help with my computer, I ask Tommy Wayne down the block. He’s in sixth grade and he’s totally rad!” The way young Donna’s face glowed when she mentioned Tommy Wayne, Hazel knew for certain her grand-daughter had a crush on the boy.
“Any way, the way daddy explains it to his clients, if you’re going into business to produce a product for a customer, are you hoping to sell 80,000 units each year, or eight million units? If an independent software developer is producing applications for a Macintosh, he has to have a much larger profit per unit just to meet his production costs, so products for a Windows PC are much cheaper because they have hundreds of millions, even billions of potential customers all over the world due to their 87% market share.”
“Okay, Bright-Eyes. Since you seem to know all about the subject, what do you recommend your grandmother and I buy, aside from the ‘pretty Mcintosh.’”
“Since you live in a motor-home, grandpa, you probably won’t want a desktop because it’ll take up too much room. I’d say a laptop would more suit your needs.”
“And we can send email and pictures with a laptop?”
“Sure, grandpa, a laptop can do just about everything a full size desktop can do. You might want a docking station if you’re going to attach a lot or peripherals.”
“Whoa! You lost me again. Docking station? We’re not talking manned orbiting space station, are we?”
Donna chuckled. “Not even close, grandpa. A docking station is where you park a laptop to take advantage of electricity in the house instead of the computer batteries. It also has more spaces where you can plug in printers and scanners and external drives and more things you may want to attach to your computer.”
“Like a camera?” he asked.
“Of course, only a camera can easily plug into the USB port on your computer.”
“Okay, let me make
notes of all this.” Henry grabbed a
pencil and began scribbling in the margins of the sale flyer from
“Hmm, I guess a minimum of 1 GHZ, but more is always better. At least 128 MB of RAM and….”
“Whoops! What do we need sheep for? No pets in the motorhome! Lots of the RV parks won’t allow them.”
Donna giggled this time. “RAM means random access memory, grandpa. That’s the size of your computer’s brain, and the more RAM you have the better. Some programs won’t even run unless you have 256 MB or more.”
“Okay, just to be on the safe side, 256 RAMs,” Henry said as he scribbled that down.
“You’ll probably want at least 40 gigs on your hard drive, grandpa. If all you’re doing is email and pictures, you could get by with about 10 gigs, but the more you use your computer the more you’ll want to have available for permanent file storage. Don’t make the mistake of getting too much, though.”
“You mean there is such a thing as too much?”
“Well, not really, grandpa. More is always better, but your primary hard drive will have to be scanned daily or weekly to be sure and keep you virus free. The bigger it is, the longer it takes to scan it. A better solution is to have a moderate size hard drive, say 20 gigs, and then have a backup hard drive as large as you like. Nothing will ever be placed on your backup drive before being scanned while on your primary drive.”
“Okay, I get your drift, Donna. Are we done yet?”
“Just about, grandpa. You probably won’t need a scanner at first, that’s for scanning copies of things you want to put into your computer files, such as old fashioned pictures or important documents and such. A printer is nice if you want to be able to print things from your computer, like pictures you want to frame and hang on the wall, or letters you want to mail to someone who doesn’t have a computer.”
“I guess we can move those items to a wish list and think about adding them another time. Okay… are we ready to go shopping?”
“If you’re going to buy a laptop, grandpa, you might want to consider adding a standard keyboard and a mouse. Any laptop can be used just as it is, straight out of the box, but you’ll find a keyboard and mouse are much easier to get accustomed to. And then I’m sure you’ll want a CD burner.”
“What’s a CD burner?” Grandpa Ellis asked.
“It allows you to create your own CD’s, grandpa. Those are digital files stored on a compact disk so you can take them with you to use on another computer, or to store in a safe place in case your computer is lost, stolen, or damaged. At least your important files will still be protected and available for you.”
Henry added CD burner to his scribbled notes. “And now we’re done?”
“I guess so, grandpa. All computers come with a MODEM installed these days, so you won’t have to buy one separately.”
“Thank heavens! We finally get something standard. What’s a modem and why do we need one?”
“Modem stands for modulator/demodulator, grandpa. That’s how you connect to a telephone line to access the Internet and your mail. Computers communicate with each other using digital signals, but telephones use analog signals. The modem acts as a translator and allows the computers to chat with each other over the telephone.”
“You see, Hazel,” Henry said to his wife, “if the computers can chat over the telephone all around the world, they’re bound to take over the world one day!”
Hazel’s only comment was, “But I still like the pretty green one.”
Donna grinned again but made no comment. “After you get everything setup and working, grandpa, then you’ll be ready to connect to the Internet. To do that, you’ll have to open an account with an ISP…..”
“I was afraid of that,” Henry said. “And how much is that going to cost us?”
“Not much, grandpa, there are even Internet Service Providers, that’s your ISP, which offer discounts for senior citizens. Since you and grandma travel all over the country, you’ll want to have one with national access numbers. The big ones like AOL, MSN, and Earthlink have local dialup numbers all across the country. But you want to stay away from AOL or everyone will know you’re a newbie.”
“Newbie? What’s that?”
“A beginner,
grandpa. Daddy says AOL is great for
beginners because it’s so simple, but it also limits what you can do on the
Internet to keep you from doing something stupid that might damage your
computer or something. MSN has more
capabilities, but daddy doesn’t like it because their web pages are too
graphics intensive. Graphics are images
which are displayed on your monitor, but they take much longer to download over
a telephone line. Earthlink is a better
choice, but you can still get Internet service by signing up with the
independents for about ten dollars a month, and even they have toll free access
numbers all over
“Now you’re talking, Donna, because I’m sure your grandmother and I are going to be constantly asking you for help with our computer.”
“Don’t worry about that, grandpa. No matter where you are, you can always order a pizza and, when it arrives, just set it on a picnic table and shout ‘Free pizza!’” That should bring every teenager within the sound of your voice and any one will be happy to help you.”
“That kid’s got smarts,” Henry told his wife.
* * *
Saturday rolled around
two days later and Henry Ellis got permission from his son to take his
grand-daughter with him while he shopped at
A fresh young salesman, young enough to have what appeared to be a terminal case of acne, quickly approached him. “Yes, sir, shopping for the young lady today, or would you rather have something for yourself?”
“She’s my personal guru,” Henry said, having picked up the slang from his son. “She’ll tell you what we want.”
Donna was eagerly eyeing the compact little computers. She compared prices and the specs shown and then asked the sales man, “Is that Presidio available with a CD burner, or would it have to be installed after purchase?”
The pimply faced kid leaned close to her and said, “Young lady, I have just what you want, and it’s only $35 extra. It’s a DVD-CDR combo. It doesn’t write DVD’s, but you can watch all the movies you want, and you’ll still be able to copy your data files to CD. Does that interest you?”
Donna smiled at her grandfather, “That’ll do, grandpa. You can put videos on a CD in MPG or WMV format. And you’ll be able to make backup copies of your important files and records.”
“Okay, Hunny-Bun, you’re the boss.” To the salesman he said, “Wrap it up, sonny. That’s the easiest sale you’ll make this week. Thank goodness my grand-daughter has promised to teach me how to use my new toy.”
With thoughts of his commission running at Olympic speed in his brain, the kid said, “You’ll just love that model, sir. Now, can I interest you in a full color printer with digital photo capability?”
“Another time, maybe,” Henry said. “I hope you’ve got a docking station for that laptop?”
“Only the finest,” the kid said, “if you’ll just follow me over here.”
* * *
Ninety minutes
later Henry and Donna left
“As soon as we get these items locked in the trunk, Donna, how about you show me where the best ice-cream shop in town is?”
Donna was enthusiastic but asked, “Does it have to be ice-cream, grandpa? Mom says frozen yogurt is more healthful.”
“You be the boss, Donna, just a little treat for you and me, even grandpas get a sweet-tooth once in awhile.”
“Oh, great! I know where they have great zprinkles and M&M’s too!”
The morning had gone well, Henry Ellis decided, and it was fun treating his grand-daughter to something she enjoyed. He found he liked it too!
* * *
When they returned home, Donna insisted Henry put the laptop in an out of the way spot and plug it in to charge the batteries. “Rechargable batteries should always be fully charged before you use them, grandpa. Let’s go into my room now and I’ll show you the basics using my computer.”
“Let me come too,” Hazel said. “Or else your grandfather won’t let me use the computer because he’ll say I don’t know anything yet.”
“Oh, grandma! It’s easy, you’ll see.”
Donna’s room was decorated to suit a normal healthy young girl. Pictures of family or friends were arranged in attractive spots, and a small bird-cage mounted on the wall provided a home for Madame Pompadour, her parakeet. Her desktop computer and printer set upon a child-sized desk against one wall. While she seated herself at her desk and booted her computer, Henry and Hazel set on the edge of her bed where they could watch everything the young girl did.
“I don’t have to worry as much about saving space like you do in your motorhome, so I have a desktop computer. Actually, it’s one daddy used several years ago before he got a new one. I like it because it doesn’t seem as fragile as his laptop, which he won’t let me even touch. He uses it when he has to go on the road to consult with clients.
“I don’t have to connect to the Internet, grandpa, because daddy subscribes to a cable ISP. That means we’re always connected everytime I boot up.”
“You’re wearing sneakers, baby, not boots,” Hazel said.
“Booting is just a term for turning on the computer, grandma.” Donna giggled.
“Well why don’t they just say so?” Hazel remarked.
When the screen lit up, Donna grabbed a little device she called a mouse and moved a small arrow around the screen, then clicked on her Internet browser. “I have my own bank account, and I can access it right here to check the balance, daddy set it up for me because he said it was important for me to learn to save a little of my allowance each week.”
When the splash screen for her bank opened, Donna entered her username and password and suddenly her account statement was pulled up. She had $72.38 in her savings account.
“If I was an adult,” Donna said, “I’d probably have a checking account and maybe even a credit card account. I could check the balance and pay my bills from right here. Daddy will show you how to set yours up, grandpa.”
“Oh, my, no more standing in line at the bank! I like this already.”
“You can do anything at home that you would usually do at a bank, grandpa, except deposit or withdraw cash. But you could transfer it between accounts if you had more than one.”
“I wonder how many bank clerks lost there job because of these new fangled things?” Hazel asked.
“Daddy says the bank has hired even more employees, only they’re in the Information Technology and Security Department, grandma. The computers make everything simpler, faster, and more accurate too because they never make mistakes.”
“But everyone always talks about computer errors,” Hazel commented.
“Fiddlesticks, grandma. The correct description is operator input error, only people don’t like to take the blame, so they say the computer made the error.”
After explaining her bank account, Donna opened a word document. “This is where I write reports for school. You just choose the font style you want, set the font size and adjust the margins, then type away. It’s cool!”
Donna typed a few words and when she began to reach the end of the line Henry asked, “I don’t see a carriage return. How do you move it down to start a new line?”
“You don’t have to, grandpa. The computer does it automatically. It’s called word wrapping. You don’t ever want to force a line break, unless you want to start a new paragraph.”
“Oh,” was all Henry could say. He didn’t think it appropriate that little girls should be forcing anyone to do anything, not even a computer, but he watched in amazement as the little I-beam indicating where she was typing dropped down to the next line and continued without a hiccup. “Say, that is cool! You’re hands never even leave the keyboard.”
“When you finish typing your report, or letter, or whatever, grandpa, you click this little button here,” she pointed to a little doo-hickey on her screen and clicked the mouse, “and that saves your document so you can open it and edit it later if you want to make changes. Or you can click here,” she pointed and clicked again and her printer began humming, “and this will print your document.”
In seconds a sheet of paper emerged from her printer with several neatly typed lines of text upon it.
“That sure is a lot easier than when I was a secretary at Tri-County Real Estate,” Hazel said. She was even more impressed when Donna demonstrated how to insert new text in the middle of her document, even change words and use the built in spell checker before printing out a revised copy. “Oh, that would have saved me hours of typing on a typewriter,” Hazel remarked.
“Typewriter,” Henry said, “don’t you mean with a stone tablet and chisel?”
“Oh, Hank!” she said and gave his shoulder a slap which wouldn’t have squashed a fly.
Donna ‘closed’ her document and brought up her email. “This is what you’ll want to do much of the time.” She clicked a tiny picture of an address book and chose a name which magically appeared on her message form. Then she typed a few lines and inserted what she called a “smiley,” a little grinning cartoon. She clicked once again and the screen cleared.
“There, I just sent Tommy Wayne an email telling him I was showing my grand parents how to use my computer.”
“Really,” Henry asked, “and it’s gone already?”
“That’s why they call letters with stamps on them ‘snail-mail,’ grandpa. Email is practically instant. It goes to his server where it waits until he logs onto his email account and then he’ll read what I just sent.”
Donna began explaining more about her computer. She opened another document she called a spread sheet and said, “This is how daddy creates a budget for each month. He instantly knows how much is coming in, how much is going out, and where it’s going. I don’t know much about it because I’m just a little girl, but daddy says it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
“A little girl, she says. All of 9 but going on 29,” Henry joked. “Donna, you can do things your grandmother and I never dreamed of doing, all because of these little magic boxes! It’s amazing!”
Donna’s computer made a chiming sound and she clicked on her email again. “Oh, look, it’s a reply from Tommy already.” When the message form opened, Hazel and Henry saw what Tommy had sent. “SHOWING OFF AGAIN, SQUIRT? I SHOULD TIE YOUR PIGTAILS IN A KNOT JUST TO TEACH YOU TO BE A GOOD LITTLE GIRL!” Tommy signed with a semicolon, a hyphen, and a lower case “p.” [ ;-p ]
“Oh, the nerve of him,” Donna said. “Sticking his tongue out at me! I’ll get even with Tommy Wayne, you just wait!”
“He what?” Henry asked, then he tilted his head to the side and said, “it does sort of look like a face winking and sticking out his tongue. That’s cute! That certainly was fast, Donna. I think your computer is really incredible.”
“That’s nothing, grandpa. You should see a chat room. You can have dozens of people typing in real time, or if the room is too crowded, you can go into a private chat. It’s really neat-O!”
“I think your grand mother and I will stick to this fantastic email, Sweet Pea. I don’t think we could ever sort out a group of people.”
“You just wait, grandpa. I’ll bet in a month or two, you and grandma will be the hippest nerds in the RV park!”
“I still think Dotty’s green computer was prettier,” Hazel said.
Later that afternoon, Henry’s son, Jason, showed his parents how to set up and use several online accounts on his computer, and how to schedule automatic recurring payments or one-time payments. “This will definitely solve your late-payment fee problem, dad. I don’t see why you never thought of this before.”
On Sunday morning, after the batteries in the new laptop had been charged up, Donna took her grand parents into the house where they could plug into the telephone jack. Before turning the laptop on, she dialed a number and told the girl on the end of the phone she wanted to set up an email account for her grand parents and then she turned the phone over to Henry who gave the girl his credit card information.
“Are you sure this is safe, Donna?”
“Grandpa,” the little girl said with exasperation, “you have to trust some people some of the time. These people could not continue to remain in business if they cheated you, and the credit card companies won’t charge you for fraudulent activitiy. Just be sure you never give your credit card information in reply to an email… too many of those are just Internet scams!”
In less than five minutes, Donna had completed setting up Henry’s account with their new ISP. Because of his love for fishing, Henry’s computer nickname became fishin-fool@netgiant.com. Hazel’s nickname became granny-redhead. She lightly insisted it was her normal hair color, but Donna caught her grand father winking as she said so.
“Now, let’s set up your email,” Donna said.
When she opened their Outlook Express, Henry remarked, “Look, we already have email? Who could have sent that to us?”
Donna giggled once more. “That’s just an advertisement, grandpa. It comes with every computer and thanks you for purchasing a Microsoft product.”
“But I thought our computer was a Presidio?”
“It is, grandpa, but all manufacturers install Windows with Microsoft applications, unless you get one of those other brands.”
“You mean the green ones?” Hazel asked.
“Yes, grandma, the Macintosh’s.” Donna entered what she called the email configuration settings and then showed her grandparents how to protect their email with passwords. “You can change these any time if you’re afraid I’ll try and read your mail, grandma.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, Sweetheart. I don’t think your grandfather and I have anything to hide. It’s not like we’re teenagers any more.”
“Speak for yourself, Hazel,” Henry said. “I’m gonna learn to be the hippest geek in the RV park, like Donna said.”
Donna entered her email addy and her parents addy into the address book on the new computer. “There, all you have to do is click on that to enter the address when you want to send mail. Now, we have one more thing to do….”
“What’s that, Donna?” Henry asked his grand-daughter.
“We need to download your ‘smart-dialer’ from your ISP.”
“What on Earth is a smart-dialer?”
“Because you’ll be traveling all over the country, grandpa, your ISP provides a file for your computer. Wherever you are, it will automatically choose the local phone number with the fastest connection speed for you. Think of it as a built-in telephone book, or your personal secretary.”
“How’s that, Hazel?” Henry asked his wife. “We have a personal secretary now!”
“Just don’t get any ideas about taking her to lunch, dear.”
Donna downloaded the smart-dialer and installed it for her grand parents. “All set, folks. Next time you plug into a telephone line, the smart-dialer will interrogate the local switchboard and determine the best access number for you. It’s a piece of cake!
“Say, you guys are
heading to
“Not yet, Hon, we
thought we’d wait until we got to
“Watch this,
grandpa.” Donna opened Google and
entered a search query. She typed in
Branson+RV facilities. In seconds
another web page opened with at least two dozen RV parks in an around
“It looks like we’ve begun saving money already, mother. We won’t need to subscribe to that campground directory any more. It’s all right here on the computer!”
* * *
On Monday and Tuesday, Henry spent much time surfing the Internet and learning what his new toy could be used for. Donna had downloaded and installed a free anti-virus program, but he didn’t know what it was used for. He was unaware he would not receive any viruses until his address could be found in several address books or data bases, but was content to feel it was doing it’s job.
Bright and early
on Wednesday morning, after breakfast with the kids and their grand daughter,
Henry and Hazel took the Interstate and headed for
After the motorhome was parked and leveled, he and Hazel went to the restaurant for a prime rib dinner. Henry always liked to treat his wife to a nice dinner out when they were on the road, instead of expecting her to cook after a long day of travel. After dinner they returned to the motorhome and Henry decided to send an email to his grand daughter to let her know they had arrived safely.
He set the laptop on the dinette table, plugged in the docking station and the telephone line and booted the computer. Henry was in such a hurry to play with his new toy, he had forgotten to plug the motorhome into the electrical service pedestal and the motorhome was still running off the RV batteries. This was fine for their lights, but the laptop, sensing it was plugged into the docking station, refused to operate unless the motorhome was plugged into what Henry referred to as ‘shore-power.’ The screen remained dark and there were no whirring and beeping sounds.
“Hazel! Go to the office and get on the phone and order us a pizza!”
“Why, Henry? You can’t be hungry after that wonderful dinner. I just put our doggie bag into the refrigerator.”
“It’s not for me, Honey…. It’s this blankety computer. I need help already!”
“I told you we should have bought the green one!”