A frog and his computer

Making analogies is not my strong suit. But I've been making them for about two weeks now. Solid.

The reason, kind and gentle readers, can be summed up in two words:

New computers.

Not just new computers, but new computer guts too.

In the world of high-class computing, I'm sure there is a proper word, or maybe even a whole batch of them, that refer to what I call "computer guts." But you get a sense, I think, of my loss to express myself in computerese.

Ask anyone. If you want to prick that laid-back, unruffled, easygoing exterior of yours truly, just casually mention that, by the way, we're getting a new computer system for the news department.

Actually, the news that a new computer system is on the way has about as much real impact as being told your wife is pregnant. There's a lot of hubbub and carrying on, but the father of the baby-to-be isn't the one who's going to have a baby growing inside his body, and won't be the one to go into labor, and won't be the one to give birth.

When it comes to a new computer system for the news department, guess who gets the full dose of pregnancy-labor-birth all crammed into about two weeks.

Me.

That, my fine friends, is an analogy. I think.

Here's another one:

If I were a frog, you could say I've dangled my webbed feet in a lot of ponds over more than four decades of newspapering. Some of the ponds have been small, and some have been big. Some of the ponds have had clear, cool water. Others have been little more than mudholes.

When this frog is told that the news department is getting a new computer system, it's like being told frogs don't live in ponds anymore. Frogs now populate the desert. Or glacier-capped mountains.

And those webbed feet? You'll have to stuff them in ballet slippers and learn to dance around digital quicksand to the tune of Ravel's "Bolero" while humming the theme from "Chariots of Fire" played on a Walkman for which you have no headphones as trainers from Florida -- Florida! where the Official State Screw-up is the hanging chad -- tell you things they already know and assume that teaching you in High German to speak Japanese will make just as much sense to a frog as it does the Burmese cat living under the back porch which has needed a new roof for years but has never been repaired because the "option" key on your computer keyboard doesn't work.

Dizzy?

Yes, you might be. Put your elbows on the kitchen counter and place your head in your hands while you take a few deep breaths as order is restored and your corn flakes settle down a mite.

Everyone else in the newsroom -- most of them are tadpoles -- thinks I'm making way too much fuss over new computers. I'm sure they're right, but they have always had computers. And TVs with remote controls. And electronic games.

Some of us old frogs typed on a manual typewriter with carbon paper, and as soon as we got comfortable with that, some genius concocted an electric typewriter whose biggest advantage was you could make five times as many mistakes in half the time. Newspaper communication took a giant leap forward with the introduction of fax equipment and copiers. Then came computers.

I'm on my seventh computer system now. I've survived all the others. So why is this one so danged difficult?

Well, for one thing this new system is a whole lot smarter than I am. And some of the things it does are sheer magic.

That's it! My problem is I'm not a frog after all. I'm a prince waiting to be kissed by a princess.

I hope she knows something about computers.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.