From Minnesota to Mesa on a modem and some sunshine

Sue Clark

“Wait a minute,” I said to my best friend. “The terrible Minnesota

weather is supposed to be my topic, but it’s beautiful outside.”

“Ha!” Susie said. “It was 95 degrees and humid last week, but now

it’s perfect. I was planning to talk about sweating a lot and insects

the size of Cadillacs.”

We walked along a forested path by her house en route to Caribou

Coffee shop, sort of a Minneapolis Starbucks. Mozart was piping out

onto its patio, and the citizens of Eden Prairie were all grinning. I

thought it was the great coffee, but Susie said, “It’s the weather;

everyone will be outside today.”

I recalled my last visit to this suburb of Minneapolis. It had

been at Thanksgiving time, and my friend Dave had insisted I take his

down jacket. Being a typical California native, I had thought a

sweatshirt would be enough.

That was until I stepped out of the airport and gasped. It was

beyond cold. It was so freezing, when we’d get into the car in the

morning, I would almost cry. I left my hat in the front seat, and the

next morning, when I picked it up to put on, it was frozen.

Susie said you get used to it.

I returned home to Newport Beach, hopped in shorts and a T-shirt,

and ran around barefoot, just smiling. My toes felt right at home on

the warm ground.

But now it was a grinning kind of day in Minnesota. We walked

another tree-lined path to see Susie’s daughter’s house. The family

was “at the lake” (remember there are 10,000 of them), but we went in

and looked around.

The house was enormous, what a Southern California Realtor might

call an estate. It was three stories that included a workout room, a

downstairs den and playroom, and amenities such as automatic blind

remotes, so you didn’t have to manually close your window coverings.

You don’t even want to know the price, except as a reminder of how

much we pay for our real estate in Orange County.

My friend had moved here to be with the grandchildren, and I’ve

never seen her happier.

She set me up on the elliptical trainer and sat on the veranda.

She calls herself “an expert at doing nothing” and looked completely

at peace doing it. I looked out over rolling grassland and maple

trees and evergreens, and thought briefly about moving here in

another of my retirements. As we began to walk home, I started

guiltily.

“Oops! I have to get that Pilot column done! It’s Saturday, and I

told Ryan [the Forum editor] I’d send it yesterday.”

“Do you want to do it here on my daughter’s computer?” Susie

asked.

“No, I’m too hungry for lunch,” I said. “I’ll use yours.”

“OK.” Susie said. “Do you remember how old my computer is?”

“Oh, yeah. When the America Online man says, ‘You’ve got mail,’ it

comes out ‘yooooouuuuuve gawwwwwt maaaaaiiiiiiil,’ and how old is

that modem?”

“What’s a modem?” Susie asked.

After we arrived back at her house, Susie led me to the computer

room. It is going to be her dad’s room, if she can ever convince him

to leave Southern California.

I started laughing and asked if Susie had ever heard of DSL?

“What’s that?” she said, as the screen slowly brightened. A few

hours later, the AOL logo appeared on the computer, and she typed in

her password.

We waited. Nothing happened. I kept laughing, waiting for the AOL

man’s voice. I usually chuckled the whole time I used this computer,

unless I was in an urgent situation.

Hold on! I was in an urgent situation. Susie wrung her hands as

the little lightening bolt failed to ignite, meaning we were still

not online. A few minutes later, it did.

“How do I make an attachment and e-mail it?”

“Huh?” said Susie, who checks her e-mail at least once a week.

I closed out of e-mail (you have to click on a little filing

cabinet, not an “X”), and went onto Microsoft Word. But then I

couldn’t get back to e-mail and then, when I did, I couldn’t return

to Word. It probably didn’t help that I was giggling so much.

So here is the column. It may not even make it to the Pilot. It’s

not easy using a modem fashioned in the Paleolithic Era, but the

weather here is so great, all I can do is laugh.

* SUE CLARK is a Costa Mesa resident and a high school guidance

counselor at Creekside High School in Irvine.