The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Techno Tim was fit to be tied and I don’t mean he’d just watched 50 Shades of Gray. We were grubbing trail, all us volunteers, at the park the county doesn’t have the money to maintain, so we do it for free. Our last county commissioner, an avowed Tea Party anti-government yahoo duly elected by us citizens, proposed selling these parks we’ve put thousands of hours into — but that’s another kettle of fish for another time. T.T. was arguing with our artist of the group, Anabelle the watercolorist who’d matter-of-factly informed him he ought to use an Apple computer, not the PC he told her he owned.

Tim’s an electrical engineer, newly retired, and he had been arguing about a quarter of a mile up the newly cleared trail back into the nettle jungle that there wasn’t much difference between an Apple and a PC. Anabelle wouldn’t buy a word of it. “It’s way friendlier,” she maintained with renewed vehemence. “I tried to use my brother’s PC and I couldn’t make heads or tails.” Tim said they were the same, just different words for the commands. “It’s not like Apple has pictures, Anabelle. It’s got the same keyboard, the same interface. Bits and bytes. You use the same programs I do. Photoshop is Photoshop. Word is Word. There’s no difference.”

Anabelle didn’t beg to differ. She insisted. “I could barely turn my brother’s PC on!” she cried and took her fury out on a salmonberry bold enough to block her way, whack whack with her machete. Tim stepped back three steps. He knew, the way we all did, he could be next on that chopping block. “What IS it with you Apple people?” he asked. “It’s like a cult. It’s like Steve Jobs handed out the Kool-Aid spiked with fairy dust. It’s just a machine, Anabelle. Not a God.”

Anabelle turned, machete glinting a primeval light through the ferns and the firs. “Ask any artist,” she said through clenched teeth. “They’re not the same. Apples are for us. Stick with your PC, see if I care, but you’d think different if you were an artist.”

Tim threw up his hands. “Okay, Anabelle, okay. Let’s agree to disagree.”

You might think we’d argue the merits of a Pulaski vs a hoe, a machete vs a weed whacker, but these are modern times on the frisky South End and only a fool argues with a True Believer. Life down here is tough enough.

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