New Toys and the Paranoia They Inflict
As I think back on when I first got my Macbook, I laugh at myself for just how much I was afraid of it being either broken or stolen. Actually, theft ranged higher on my concern list than the breakage (warranties help curb that fear).
I would take my laptop to work and was afraid to leave it on my desk while I went out to lunch (even if it was in my laptop bag completely invisible to the world). I would store it in one of the drawers until I could return from lunch.
If I happen to be eating lunch in the breakroom and took it with me, I would not leave the breakroom without it (even if only stepping away 50 feet to my desk to get something and come right back). It is very common for me to mentally prepare myself for the worst.
Often, I’ve seen this is mostly driven by prior experience of the individual. If you see someone driving along and being very skittish about cars near them, you can bet that the person had recently been in an accident and are afraid of repeating the event. My fear of losing my new toys comes from having one of them stolen.
This particular event occurred due to an unusual set of circumstances. When it was time for me to leave work for the day, I would put my MP3 player in my desk drawer to keep it out of sight. This would keep all but the most determined thief from locating it and walking off with it.
However, this day was unusual because at about 4pm, the power went out in my building due to the extreme heat causing a minor blackout in our block. After about 30 minutes, we found out it would not be back on for a few hours. So we decided to go ahead and leave early. Well, it was dark and I managed to find my briefcase, but it was not light enough for me to see that my MP3 player was still sitting on the desk.
Unfortunately, this was also Friday, so it was out on my desk during the weekend and was most likely stolen by someone in the cleanup crew. It was never found, but I was devastated because I had purchased it for such a good deal off of woot.com that I couldn’t easily replace it for the same price.
This led to my current phobia of losing my newest toy because I had only had that MP3 player for about a month. I’m not so much like that with my laptop now as the phobia has moved on to a new toy, my iPod Touch. Once again, I’m not prone to leave it out on my desk when I’m away (for restroom breaks, I hide it under some paperwork and during lunch, I put it away in my briefcase).
This paranoia extended to the Ballpark in Arlington where we saw one of the last home games of the Texas Rangers baseball team for this season. I pulled it out and checked for any WiFi connections (the only ones were not public) and also spent some minutes updating my contacts list. However, when it came time to go to the restroom, I was almost afraid to do so knowing that someone who had seen me using it might follow me in there and attempt to force me to give it up.
I took my chances and went anyway and, as usual, I had nothing to be afraid of. It just brings to mind that sometimes, not having nice things is less of a concern or bother to one’s conscience. Especially if you’ve got a very high-gear imagination combined with a large dollop of pessimism like I have.
Update
I just read this short post that kinda puts all this into perspective…
You Can’t Take It With You
