Tales from the Cooinda Cycle: Memory Three

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, I tried once again to explain the process.

“Select the text, then press control-C, then select where you want to paste it and press control-V.”

I was beginning to lose track on how long this had been going on. It felt like a constant loop of saying the same instructions over and over again.

He looked at the keyboard. He might have it now… then he pressed down on the ctrl key and the C key at the same time. Yes! Then he did something with the mouse, and suddenly the text was moved in the document and jumbled. No…

“Why does that keep happening when I do what you said?” He said, a tinge of frustration coming through in his voice.

“You said it wouldn’t move the words.”

“That’s because you accidentally dragged the section of text after highlighting it. Let me undo it and try again.” I replied.

I undid the movement of text in the document, and highlighted the section of text for him to practice on. I had thought this was going to be a simple 10 minute thing. Make a new document, paste a chunk of text into it and use that for him to practice copy and paste, and maybe cut and paste.

That was… Fraggle Rock! Forty-five minutes ago!

“You’re not explaining it right!” He said, the frustration in his tone growing.

The urge to begin crying began to well up in me once again. This was such a mistake, I don’t know what I was thinking, teaching him to use copy+paste when he barely understood how to find a document on his desktop.

“I am, but you didn’t highlight anything when you copied, so it didn’t copy anything to then paste. When you dragged the mouse it moved a section.”

“What do you mean, highlight?” He asked.

Oh man, I’ve made a terrible mistake. I looked at my watch, my shift will finish in thirty minutes and I still need to empty the cafe trash. He’s not going to be happy if I leave now.

“Here, like this.” I said, taking the mouse and clicking to begin highlighting the section of text. “You click and drag the mouse to highlight.” Then pressing ctrl+C, “Then you press control-C to copy the highlighted section.” Then I clicked down to a new line in the document. “Then press control-V to paste the text.”

He almost shook with annoyance.

“You didn’t tell me that earlier, you went ahead too quickly!”

Suppressing the need to call out his rudeness and correct him, I tried my best to explain calmly.

“Well I did say at the beginning that it’s control-C to copy and control-V to paste. Maybe I didn’t explain that you need to highlight what you want to copy with the mouse." Now is not the time to tell him about the right-click option with the mouse…

“Now, I’m sorry about this but I actually need to head off. I finish in about twenty-five minutes and I still need to empty the trash. Also need to find the Chess Man and apologise for missing our game today.

I don’t think I’d ever seen him this frustrated or angry, at least not at me. It was as if I challenged his manliness.

“Fine. Go then.”

“I can come up again tomorrow to go over it again if it helps.”

“Forget about it!” He said in a puff of anger.

I got up and left, leaving him sitting at the computer to most likely spend the next few hours in a loop of trying to copy and paste a piece of text, and to probably forget how to do it when he next opened up the document actually containing his memoirs.

Man, this place really does a number on you… I never want to end up here, stuck in a horrible never ending loop of forgetfulness and frustration.

As I emptied the bin on my way out I reflected that this brief moment of refuse disposal was in all likelihood the most peace and quiet I got any day I was here… and I get to do it all over again tomorrow.