My iLife class started two weeks ago. It's okay so far. I don't love it, and usually I can tell by the second date if there's ANY chance in hell of that, so I'm trying to work through that particular angst that only I can bring to a simple software class.
First of all, it is the Cocoon of classes. Like the movie? Yeah, approximately ten senior citizens were beamed down from the spaceship to take this course. The sight of this many gray-haired Mac geeks is giving me a glimpse into my future that I'm apparently just not ready for. One lady who appears to be in her late 70s/early 80s, whose name rhymes with "furnace," that's all I'm sayin', is down with all of the new gear. She's all, "1 Gig? Ha!" when the teacher says something, and yet she looks like my grandma when she used to get dressed up in her best duds to go to Bingo. On the one hand I like it, because hey...I'm the last person to be ageist (I was a social worker working with seniors for years, and I'm down with the over 70 set, trust me), and why shouldn't older adults be a part of the revolution too? But on the other hand, and this is terrible, she annoys me. Her voice is annoying. She sounds like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Imagine every word sounding like his affected pronunciation of"Shweetheaht", except for in a woman's voice, and followed by a sly little grin and a weird little laugh. It's so odd! That's shallow of me, but I can't help it. It grates, and for some reason I'm very sensitive to voices. There are singing voices, for instance, of very popular performers, that just tweak me for some reason and I can't even stand to hear them. I know. Freak.
She's also quite self-righteous about her Mac Mommy status, and shakes her head while she's unloading her stories about her gear, like "I know, please don't hate me because I have the BETA version of blahblahblah." I didn't think that kind of geek oneupmanship was possible in anyone who was alive in aught-12, so it's kind of intriguing. Plus she's got the disposable income to equip herself with the entire Apple store inventory, so "Ha," she says again. The people who took my last photo class were the same way: "Oh, I'll just go home and print this out on my SuperMegaMan 50,000 printer with the most excellent resolution available at the PROSUMER LEVEL", and they would, and I'd spend my scant two hours in the darkroom, coming out with a muddy shot of a building to show for it. Ergo, my print would kind of suck, and theirs would have that tinny glow of perfection that only Photoshop and a high end printer can provide. Never mind that it was a PRINT PHOTO CLASS, because my professor was of their peer group, and wasn't about to argue with them about the TINY matter of it being a black and white FILM course, especially swayed as he was by their outstanding equipment. I took solace in the LEARNING PROCESS that I was experiencing. Right. And then I told him how bogus and unbalanced I thought it was, and he ignored me, which only served to remind me how often unproductive it is to argue with The Man.
God, where did that rant come from? That appears to have been pent up for a while. No wonder I eat too much chocolate. ANYway...Part of not being ageist (and this sounds bad, I guess) is that I do not think all old people or all children are sweet, just like I don't think all people my age are sweet. People are people, regardless of age, and some of them I like and some of them I don't, which is exactly their perspective on me, so it's all good.
For instance, R., the Mac "genius", who is assigned to our class...I'm not fond of him either. I think he's really, incredibly rude, and I don't understand people who go into a social and especially a professional situation where they aren't the boss and ACT OUT. This man cannot handle a question without sighing or scowling or somehow nonverbally implying his relative greatness. He's ostensibly there to provide "technical support," and yet gets exasperated by the slightest question. As he stalked around the lab self-importantly and crankily scanning the bar codes on the mac.com accounts so the students could see them, I waited for a break in his action to ask him a simple question about how to proceed through the actually pretty altogether simple mac.com set up. He was all, "I am not here to answer PROCESS questions. I won't steal the PROFESSOR'S thunder!" So I said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't sure of your FUNCTION here. Now that I understand it's simply to take up space and collect a paycheck and act important for no reason it's cool." I'm there to learn something, not to spar with anyone, and why, oh why must people bring the attitude in so many no-attitude-required situations? Universal health care AND anger management for everyone! Posthaste!
So I figured it out without him anyway, which is no big surprise. Trust thyself, the spirits say, and it's proven time and time again. And not a man, clearly, who seems to need to remind a room full of senior citizen computer geeks, and me, and a couple of other people, that he uses similar passwords "like, on, haha, swing dance and DATING websites," to make it easier. Whatever.
So anyway, enough of them. I'm going to keep showing up and I'm going to ignore them and I'm going to learn how to make a MOVIE. And a podcast, maybe...and a song? Who knows. I'm iLaurie now, because all the other account names I wanted were taken, and iLaurie, as f'ing incredibly stupid as it is, makes me laugh. And why not? Everything else has an "i" slapped on the front of it. I'll just consider it ironic commentary on THAT little marketing scheme. Maybe Steve Jobs would pay me if I actually legally changed my name.
I'm becoming a bigger idiot by the day, and you know what? I'm embracing it. You heard me. I'm giving it a big, fat hug, because why not? WHY? NOT? At least I don't pretend to be a genius.
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