Wednesday, August 8, 2007

A Blast from the Past

When I was a senior in college my now-husband and I switched computers. He took my desktop and I took his hand-me-down laptop because I had a very small desk. We didn't need it after we married, so it stayed at my parents' waiting for us to have room in our suitcases to bring it home.

After more than four years, we have finally gotten it back. My husband decided to take all the documents off of it while we still have floppy disks lying around to transfer them. Our main computer doesn't even have a floppy drive, so we have to use a third computer to help in the transfer.

The first thing I noticed when the laptop was set up was that it had Windows 95. It seems so archaic compared to Windows Vista. It reminded me of how I excited I was in 1996 that my parents were finally getting a new computer that had Windows 95.

When my husband opened up the documents folder he found many sub folders labeled:

My name
Husband's name
Husband's sibling number 1
Husband's sibling number 2
Husband's sibling number 3
Husband's sibling number 4
Spouse of husband's sibling number 4
Husband's sibling number 5

I guess this old laptop has been around a looooong time.

5 comments:

Mrs. Bear said...

I wonder how many papers have been written and saved on that one trusty, hardworking computer? Very cool.

Flannery said...

Not sure I get it—had the files dated from the time before you knew what your future husband's name would be?

Hélène said...

Flannery, yes they were created before we met. However, given that two of his siblings graduated in 1995 or earlier, my husband thinks that some of them were imported to it. I suspect that three of his siblings used the laptop in addition to the two of us. Two of the three I didn't know until after we got engaged.

Does that make any sense? I had to read your question several times before I understood it. I couldn't get past the idea of two files dating each other. :)

Mrs. Bear said...

Courting. Two files courting each other. ;-)

Flannery said...

Oh, now I get it—you name files after the creator. I name files after their contents (which would be letters to that person, files they had sent, things that reminded me of them, and so on).

I liked the idea of you making a file of notes on a husband that as yet didn't exist, as well on his five hypothetical siblings!