One More Dig at Computers....

by 

Patti Dickinson

I have a PhD in PTA.  Honestly.  I have chaired the carnival, the Pancake Breakfast and Field Day. I have been a room mom for twenty-one years.  I have been Recording Secretary on two different Boards. And I have been a worker-bee....when I just show up and do what I'm told.  I like that kind of work. Rubbing elbows with moms who have the same mind-set....running themselves ragged to soccer practices, Boy Scouts, CCD.  Where crock pot meals are served with some regularity. Feeling a communal weariness.  Next year, I am the PTA President at my caboose's middle school.  Dwindling days when involvement at school isn't necessary. I will miss those days.  So this is my departure.....

Today I met with the principal to put the calendar together for next year.  I came out of that meeting, my head spinning with dates.  Scribbled notes, jumbled thoughts, and the beginning of a breath-into-a-brown-paper-bag moment.  What, oh what had I gotten myself into?  :-)

It became clear when I got home that I was going to have to get organized.  Oh, I am organized. To a fault, my kids would say.  They would tell you that my hair stands on end when I find eleven pairs of shoes by the back door.  Eleven. Three kids living at home....one of them male. Males only wear one pair of shoes.  Do the math.  

Organized.  The Lean Cuisines in my freezer are label-facing-out.  Why, you ask?  So that when I am ravenous, I can grab whatever sounds good and throw it in the microwave, eat in under five minutes and thus avoid watching the wheels fall off the Weight Watchers diet plan.  

Organized.  The kids know that if their stuff isn't on the calendar, it isn't happening.  Nope.  The Calendar Queen doesn't like surprises.  I am flexible, but not that flexible. Not finding out at 10:00 on a Friday night that one of my kids is in a math contest that starts at 8 in the morning and we are on the hook for driving four other kids and I don't even know where it is and neither does my kid, and he/she can't find the permission slip anyway.  Enough to ruin a perfectly good Friday night. Grrrrr. 

Organized.  That is going to require figuring out this computer and how to make it do what I need it to do.  My husband (a computer wizard) just doesn't get why I struggle so.  I bet he has shown me a handful of times how to make a folder.  And a folder-within-a-folder.  Still working to achieve competence on that one.  I still like pieces of paper.  I know, the stuff of dinosaurs. I learned to type as a sophomore in high school.  Mrs. Stites' typing class.  Had my typewriter moved two different times because I could not stop "talking to my neighbor".  So I am used to typing, then ripping it out of the machine and there it is.  Sure you can get a piece of paper from a computer, as well.  But you have to make a concerted effort to get that piece of paper.  It's not automatic.

I have mastered some skills.  I can send a link.  Make a folder.  Print.  Email. Forward.  Send an attachment.  The basics.  It is clear that unless I want to allocate several closets in my house to paper re: PTA stuff, I am going to have to learn a new system, and fast.  There is a trust issue here.  When I put something on the desktop, it darn well better be there when I need it. I have a habit of saving something, not labeling it so it just shows up as a "date" where I put it, and you can imagine the angst of needing something in a hurry and having to wonder whether what I am looking for was written in November or January. 

My brain just doesn't work the way computers do.  Take copy/paste.  You highlight first, then choose copy.  I think that is backwards.  It would seem you should declare what you are trying to do first, then highlight.  See what I mean?

I have a lot to learn.....but not at all sure that I am ready for this PTA job to be paperless.