Today, I mourn the loss of a friend. Not a human friend, because I doubt I'd be able to blog about such a loss on the evening it occurred.
No, I mourn the loss of a near and dear piece of technology: my printer.
In a last brave attempt to provide me with the reading for tomorrow (yes, I procrastinated my homework for my tomorrow afternoon class, but hello! Thanksgiving break!), my dear HP Deskjet 920c choked on one last piece of paper. It sputtered a final farewell. And then, it worked no more.
I'll miss it.
You may think me strange, but this printer has followed me since the summer of 2002. The summer I headed straight down to BYU for a summer semester instead of reveling in my last days of being an irresponsible teenager. My parents gave it to me as a graduation present. This printer never left me. It moved down to Provo, it moved back home with me to Centerville. It moved to my friend's condo with me (in another part of Centerville) and then back home once more.
If I was a boomerang child who constantly bounced back home, my printer boomeranged right along with me. It endured the entirety of my undergraduate education and almost three-fourths of my master's work. My first real-life, full-time job in the corporate world.
It moved with me to my first apartment in Salt Lake City. And it's moved twice more, to different SLC locations, as I've moved on with my life. It printed faithfully (albeit slowly...seriously, I could sometimes straighten my hair, apply make-up, and change my outfit a couple of times before it printed my longer seminar papers) until this fateful evening.
This printer stayed with me through several classes, several boyfriends, and several roommates. It endured crowded space on the floor when I didn't clean; it suffered (unintentional) kicks as I moved back and forth across my messy room in the dark. It printed the poetry and essays of others, but showed fairness and equality in printing all of my poetry and all of my essays just as easily. As tidily.
Rest in peace, my fair printer.
Also, for the record, you chose a heckuva time to die. (Seriously? This close to the end of the semester?)
3 comments:
That is sad news indeed! And what a faithful printer too. I guess it decided that it couldn't make it through the second to the last end of the semester with you. How very sad! If I ever figure out what ink cartridges I need and how to change them (I'm slightly technologically impaired where my printer is concerned, but it was given to me as a gift), you're always welcome to use that, even though I know it's not the same.
Oh, I don't need to use yours. I replaced it. Bought a new printer from OfficeMax yesterday. Didn't have much of a choice, really, because I couldn't exactly go printerless through the end of this semester. Also, I got a pretty kickin' deal on the new one.
(And the new one actually prints relatively quickly! It's like magic!)
Hooray for printers that work and are quick!
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