In No Time, the Meeting Came to Disorder
So we’re at the breakfast table, talking through the newspaper, the way married people do.
“Maybe we need a Y2K strategy,” I tell my wife. “You know, so our home computer can handle the year 2000.”
“That’s up to you, cyber boy,” my wife says, not looking up from the paper.
If you haven’t heard of Y2K, you will. It’s an abbreviation for Year 2000. For computer users, it represents the apocalypse, the moment when computers everywhere come to a halt, the sun quits rising and Stella loses her groove again.
Of course, that’s not the way the systems people at your company explain it. According to them, Y2K has to do with computers’ inability to read the date. Wonderful as they are, many computers still can’t tell time.
Whatever the reason, bookmark your brain: Y2K means trouble.
“Maybe you should form a task force,” my wife says.
“I don’t really trust task forces,” I say.
“OK,” she says, “but who’re you going to blame when things don’t work?”
So I decide to form a committee, to assemble some of the sharpest young computer minds in our family.
At our first meeting, they arrive late and unprepared, as if for dinner.
“Will this take long?” the boy asks.
“Yeah, Dad,” my lovely and patient older daughter says. “We have things to do.”
I explain to them what’s at stake, how our family needs to be “Year 2000 compliant” in 18 months. Otherwise, any computer-related activities may be lost. Even the cars may not start, ambushed by some microprocessor.
“The car?” my older daughter says, suddenly alert.
“Everything’s vulnerable,” I explain. “Computer games. Power Point presentations. E-mails to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
“I never e-mailed Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the boy says.
“Then how’d you get her picture?” his older sister asks.
“She sent it to me,” the boy says.
“I think that’s a topic for another meeting,” I say, trying to stick closely to the agenda.
Like a lot of Y2K committees, this group is young. Ranging in age from 7 to 15, most have worked on computers all their lives. To them, computers are like toasters. You plug them in, you turn them on. To them, computers are pretty simple.
And as the first Y2K committee on our cul-de-sac, it is eager to get to work, to tackle all the complex issues that lie ahead.
“Dad!” the little red-haired girl says.
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s moving his lips funny,” the little girl says, glaring at her brother. “Like a lizard.”
“Lizards don’t have lips,” I say.
“He does.”
I pause and wait for silence. I look at the little girl. She frowns. I look at the boy. He smiles. Or maybe he’s just moving his lips funny. I begin again.
“Now, I’ve made a list of all the potential computer problems in our house . . .”
“Is a TV a computer?” the boy asks.
“No,” I say.
“It can be,” my older daughter says.
“Is the toilet a computer?” the little girl asks.
“No,” I say.
“It can be,” my older daughter says.
This is a joke. I know this because the little girl laughs like a leaf blower at the suggestion that a toilet might be a computer. For some reason, it strikes her as pretty hilarious.
“If you don’t plug it in, it’s not a computer,” her brother explains.
Except that he doesn’t really explain it that way. What he really says is “You dweeb,” which I guess is a brother’s way of explaining something complicated. But he says it nicely.
“Dad, he called me a dweeb,” the little girl says.
“I said it nicely,” the boy explains.
“You’re not a dweeb,” I say.
“Am I a computer?” she asks, a twinkle in her eye.
The little girl is only 7, and already she knows how to bring a meeting to a halt with some irreverent remark. Each year, she seems to get better at these senseless and irreverent remarks. By the time she is 10, she will probably be running a major studio.
“You’re not a computer,” I say. “Or a dweeb. Now can we get on with this meeting?”
“What meeting?” the boy says.
“Go ahead, Dad,” the little girl says. “We’re listening.”
As you can see, our family meetings are no different from your meetings at work. For the first five minutes, I have their full attention. After that, it is touch and go. Mostly go.
As I continue down the agenda, my older daughter leaves to take a phone call, the little girl falls asleep on my elbow and the boy tries to put a quarter in his bellybutton.
At Microsoft, Bill Gates has meetings like this all the time.
“Dad, will you pull the quarter out of my belly button?”
“Not in a million years,” I say.
“I didn’t think so,” the boy says.
We sit there a moment listening to the little girl snoring on my elbow.
“Is this meeting over?” the boy asks.
“Yeah, we’ll meet again next week,” I say.
“I’ll be there,” he says.
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* Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.
