For those of you fortunate enough never to have made the acquaintance of the BSOD-symptom computers exhibit, these four little letters spell out BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

After years of peaceably muddling along, my little computer village suddenly turned a striking blue. White lettering shouted at me that I had once again committed a trespass of carefully guarded Microsoft Territory. Nowhere could I find the little pointer. Whatever had occurred was apparently an irreversible thing. All that was left for me to do was to turn off the machine. Needless to say I had my fingers crossed. Whatever terrible deed I had committed, I sort of hoped that it would not be at the expense of 25 pages of written material on a manuscript. But then another thought occurred to me. What if Windows decided to wipe out everything? To quote a line from a once popular musical: IT HAS BEEN KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN DONE!

Body taut and hands shaky I pushed the power button. And what do you know? The helm responded. (Quote from Star-Trek). The price of that little maneuver was, of course, twenty-five pages of manuscript. Being in need of wisdom and of consolation, I called my guru. This time, I felt, the computer had been absolutely and totally unfair and unjust. There was that usual pause on the line, an indication that the guru was thinking; an opportunity for me to reiterate my innocence. Then: "Did you save as you went along writing?" "I was going to do that when I finished." He didn't have to say what I thought and he thought at this point. If he had told me once, he had told me a hundred times to save periodically and that did not mean after 25 pages. Did I defrag? I couldn't defrag because I didn't run the scan-disk. And how long ago? Gee, time does have a way of getting away. "That's why you got the Blue Screen of Death' because you didn't run the scan disk." I promised to make an immediate back up of my material while I was waiting for the guru to arrive.

My mind casually reviewed all those marvelous commercials about how easy it was to buy a computer, to run a computer, to play games on the computer. Funny, not a single commercial ever mentioned DEFRAG, or SCAN DISK. For Catholics there is a way of admitting that one had wronged without exactly saying it in English. It is a well-known Latin phrase. MEA MAXIMA CULPA. I was indeed the culprit. It was quite the afternoon. For someone who was certain not to have wronged, I maxima-culpa'd all over the place while Clarence, firmly but nonetheless patiently explained to me once more the relationship of space and memory as the computer understood it to be. The lesson also included the simple fact that the computer computes whether I push a button or not; the fact that it helps to empty the trash can once in a while and the fact that the trash can has a name. It is known as the RECYCLE BIN. That brings me to the beginning of this column. Above my computer, easy to read, and difficult to avoid is a small medium-sized placard. It is made up of a picture of my favorite wildlife orphan, a little skunk named Au' Conntrair'.I gave her that name because she was always very contrary. Beneath the picture are the words that are at the beginning of this column, in hopes, that I may never again encounter the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH, at least not at the expense of twenty-five pages of manuscript stuff. Lest I forget, I look up and softly say to myself: DEFRAG YOUR &*%$# MACHINE!!!!!!!