It feels like just yesterday when I was told by my guardian in Lagos that I was being shipped off yet again but this time to my new owner. I was excited. I was finally going to be out of my carton box and into the hands of the next doctor, lawyer, architect, or Nobel Prize winner. I expected so much but I equally had so much to offer. You see, my parents (Hewlett and Packard) sent me out to make a difference in someone’s life. Among my friends, SONY, Dell, Asus, Samsung and LG I was the ENVY of the pack: with my soft touch backlit keyboard, chrome finish, Beats Audio, fingerprint scan, 12GB RAM and 1 Terabyte of storage.
The hot climate of Nigeria has been nothing like the cool US climate I’ve been accustomed to from birth. I’ve even heard rumours before my arrival in that the Internet connectivity in Nigeria was slow and that data bundles usually got depleted quickly. I even heard that WiFi wasn’t common in a lot of urban areas – that’s unthinkable. I wondered what my new owner would be like. After I arrived at a high-rise building on the Marina skyline I wondered if I was on my way to the CEO!
My first impression when my carton box opened and I saw this bald guy with glasses beaming down at me I thought, ‘Who the heck is this bald guy with glasses beaming down at me?’ ‘Does this guy have big teeth or is he just really happy to see me?’ ‘Is he handling me with extreme care or is he touching me inappropriately?’ ‘Look at his desk?’ ‘I hope this guy is the one who’s only going to charge me up and hand me over to my true owner’. Alas, after the whole ceremony of his colleagues coming to pet me (and congratulate him), I realized that wherever this guy was taking me after work would be my new home, whether I liked it or not. But I had a backup plan.
There was this thing one of the other laptops in my former warehouse told me – If you didn’t like a particular owner fight the power button. Basically if someone tried to press the power button after a full charge I would simply resist and keep my monitor screen off. After several failed attempts what usually happened was that the irate owner would call the local supplier and ask for either a replacement or a refund. I had never subjected any potential owner to this ordeal before but I was bracing myself just in case.
We got to his apartment late in the evening (not that I had a curfew in the first place) and he unwrapped and mounted me on his dining table. His place looked quite neat and decent but I didn’t want to get sentimental or weak right before possibly having to ‘fight the power’. As he went into his bedroom perhaps to get out of his work clothes, I scanned the dining table and noticed a few business cards, a note pad, tissue box, cuff links and this colourful little book lying on its front cover. I noticed the name on the book binder and I recall it was an unusual name I heard earlier in his office when his colleagues asked who owned the laptop. This was beginning to seem a lot better than I had hoped. I read the synopsis on the back and confirmed that he was indeed a writer. For me, that meant I wouldn’t be neglected. I would get more attention than his TV, social media or his girlfriend(s). I would be his first thought in the morning and his last thought at night. Life was going to be bliss.
Fast forward 3 months later and this facade couldn’t be any further from the truth. He hasn’t touched me or so much as even looked at me since he started his new job role. It seems to be taking so much of his time. He comes back later than usually and goes straight to bed. Even with the WiFi on prefers to browse on his smartphone and not on me like he used to. I’m suspecting that desktop I saw when I first arrived at my owner’s office. I think he’s cheating on me. And if he doesn’t typing something on his so-called crazy blog I WILL fight the power for real this time.
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