Screen – Six Sentence Story

In the good old days when your grandfathers were dating your grandmothers and your father and mother were still a twinkle in their eyes students used computer labs where each could interact with a boxy screen through a noisy keyboard.

Seated in one of the lab chairs was Steven losing his composure when he faced instructions to press some cryptic key sequence. Pressing the wrong key generated an error message normal human beings could not understand which led him to press other (wrong) keys which took him through a labyrinth filled with dead ends and booby traps. I will spare the gentle reader the exact words leaving Steven’s lips as he exposed his heartfelt frustration which his fellow students mistook for demonic possession.

Eventually Gerald got up from his chair and walked over to where Steven was sitting wondering if he could figure out what the problem was while trying not to think of the consequences coming from Steven’s anger if he could not. Gerald pressed what might be called today the escape key, but God only knows what it was back then as peace reigned once more in the computer lab and grandfathers and grandmothers could go back to cherishing the twinkle in each other’s eyes.

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Denise offers the prompt word “screen” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

22 thoughts on “Screen – Six Sentence Story”

  3. Well said! We need more personal contact and not be hostages to the internet and I phones. I dont have a cellphone and I see too many folks addicted to them with no real face to face conversations.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Totally. The level of negativity possible when in conflict with a machine (the internet et. al.) is that half of the pair is human. The other half is not. When we forget the (as I more often than not do) opponent is not human, all the negative emotion/energy has only one place to go.
    Not so healthy

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Tell you what, Frank – there’s been a time or 2 a long time ago, the same thing might have been said about me, lol. I’ve found, if the fix isn’t fixed after a few keystrokes, best to walk away!

    Liked by 2 people

  8. I grew up with five older brothers who are all to some extent computer tech nerds. When I was a preteen / young teen I understood a good many things about computers that people who didn’t know my family would never have expected me to know, all because computers was always the default conversation topic among my brothers, and I was forced to listen to them while we all helped out with chores like after supper clean up and dishes. All of my friends in elementary school and high school came to me when they had a computer related question. I would on occasion spread the knowledge of the function of the escape key to yet another person.

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