Larry Miller is taking a break from writing, but will return soon with new “Miller Light” columns. During his absence, Spectrum is running some of his favorite columns, including this one originally published in June, 1998.

Yesterday, a computer expert came over. He installed a few new programs and taught me how to use them. It was a waste of time and money, as were the violin, piano, art and drama lessons my parents made so much a part of my childhood.

Before my mentor arrived, I was very comfortable at the keyboard. Today, I am afraid.

As long as I used my peerless Pentium partner strictly as the greatest eraser ever invented, I was the boss. In control. Master of my mission. But now that my computer has capabilities of which I hadn’t dreamed, I am afraid that I will mess things up.

Now, don’t go blaming the cyber specialist who was here and added these new computer capacities to my old computer’s components. He spent hours trying to teach me how to take full advantage of these modern wonders he made available to me. I guess I just don’t learn well from teachers. I have to learn by my own mistakes.

The problem is that on a computer, my mistakes can mean that my hard drive is only a keystroke or two away from disaster.

It was just like high school algebra for me. While the teacher was explaining a problem, I followed step by step. When I had to repeat the process for homework, I didn’t know which algebraic foot to put forward first.

It wasn’t so bad when I messed up back in high school. No hard drive would crash because I didn’t put parentheses around a mathematical expression. At worst, the teacher would use my homework as an example to the class of how not to do it.

At the computer, it is different. A hard drive crash could happen and all the information on my hard drive, accumulated over the years, would be no more. No wonder I am scared to touch the keyboard.

As a result of yesterday’s lesson, I have several dozen pages of notes I took. But as it was in high school algebra, I have no idea what they mean. One note reads exactly like this: “\windows\temp\ eul305.” Is that English or just a bunch of cyber stuff? Am I supposed to know what “eul305” means? And if I don’t know, how am I supposed to use it?

Another note says, “Navigate to gvnet on c drive.” How do I do that? I know what each individual word in that sentence means, but when they are all put together, that’s something else.

After the computer whiz left and I tried to perform the navigation process he had just shown me, I felt as though I was back in Algebra I. I had no idea what the teacher had been talking about.

Allow me to digress for a moment. My dear late wife also had a problem with understanding and remembering. Whenever she had a doctor’s appointment, she insisted that I go with her. As soon as she left the doctor’s office, she was at a loss to recall what had been said. I had to explain it all when we got home. Doctors I could get. Not computer people.

Incidentally, in high school my dear wife always got an “A” in algebra and was one of the first computer programmers in the city of Philadelphia. Go figure.

But getting back to my computer lesson yesterday, I actually paid a man $65 an hour to flunk me. Well, he didn’t actually do that, but that’s only because he didn’t grade me. In high school, I could take algebra over again in summer school. Nobody flunks there. Maybe I can get my computer expert to run a summer school.

Meanwhile, I am trying to write this column without hitting the wrong keys and doing terrible damage. The problem is that I don’t know which keys are the wrong ones. I use the computer when I write because, as I mentioned earlier in this piece, it is the greatest eraser ever invented. And the way I write, I need the greatest eraser ever invented.

The fact that you are reading this means that I finished the column without hitting the wrong keys. Now, I am going on the Internet and, like Alfred E. Newman, I will not worry. Let the Internet people worry. They don’t know it, but they have mighty good cause to do just that.


Humor columnist Larry Miller is a former television writer who has penned lines for Dick Van Dyke, Ed McMahon, Jack Paar and many others, and for shows including "The Dating Game," "Beat the Clock" and "Petticoat Junction." In 1985, he began his weekly newspaper column on the lighter side of getting older.