unlucky in laptops

“Have you heard about this one laptop per child thing?” my mom asked the other day.

“Isn't it something about donating money to get underprivileged kids a computer?”

“No...well maybe...but I think they want you to give them your old laptops,” she said. “It's terrible! Why would they be encouraging something like this?”

“I'm not even sure that they want anybody's old laptop...but even if they do, what's the harm in that?” I asked.

“I know all about these computers,” she explained. “These kids now a days, even if you erase your hard drive, they can go in and bring back everything! All your passwords and bank accounts...they could steal your whole identity! Not to mention all the porn that people download anymore. By giving them old laptops, all we're going to do is create a generation of identity thieves who will all be addicted to pornography!”

“Mom,” I tried to reason, “I'm sure that they would clean out the hard drives so nothing could be found. Why would you even be worried about this? You only use the computer to play solitaire.”

“I heard a report about it on 20/20. And besides, that's not true at all,” she responded. “I google and email all the time! I've gone digital!”

“You've gone digital?”

“Yes,” she said. “I used to do the New York Times crossword puzzle in the newspaper every morning, but now I do it on-line. I'm becoming very technologically savvy with all of these computer do-hickeys.”

My mom shifted gears and began relating a story about a distant cousin, but as I listened I couldn't help but feel sorry for the future kid that may one day inherit my mother's old computer. Because while all of his friends sit around stealing credit card numbers and watching pornography from the recovered hard drives of their donated laptops, the kid that got my mom's would be left trying to find a seven letter word for 'hapless'.