To the 2007 model MacBook lying on top of a nest of finals week papers strewn across my desk, you deserve your rest. You deserve to spend days as a bookshelf decoration, working no more than as a bookend to my graphic novel collection. I hope the screws and wires beneath your plastic casing strain a little less after this semester and being carted up and down the hills of campus in a tote bag. I am sorry for smothering your cover and keyboard with glittery horse stickers during my 10th grade year, and I hope you like the snazzy gold duct tape I selected to cover your cracks. Oh, and the 'N' key that fell off a few years ago? I still have it, I promise. Thank you, twentieth-century warrior, for greeting me with a blue login screen after every fall from a couch or jolt inside my bag. You're a survivor.
Thank you for your companionship during all hours of the day, and especially for the evenings I spent watching your clock crawl from ten-thirty in the evening to twenty minutes after midnight, then to three-thirty in the morning when I finally saved my documents for class that day. Instead of forcing me to cut my night's work short by taking an unexpected sleep session, your hard drive suffered on until my job ended (exported to PDF and saved successfully!). I absolutely hated clicking those minuscule two-pixel points on my Precalculus graphs, and I know how frustrating it was to be told "No, not that button but the one 0.008 inches to the right of it and on top of that hovering text box. No, the other stupid thing!"
Speaking of "stupid things," you never were one. Yes, I know you heard that phrase multiple times after I found myself waiting for over two minutes for an entire web page to load. Seriously, I remember moments when I thought I would sooner see the results of the 2020 election than read the Sir Phillip Sidney article I had to print for class. "Load, you..." I recall whispering under my breath, followed by whichever curse word slipped first across my tongue. Drumming my keys across the keyboard while watching your cursor frozen in a spot, I considered smacking you against the desk in frustration. I remain thankful that I did not.
I knew that we reached the last semester of our partnership when I found myself frequently staring at the blinking folder of your loading screen, a grim warning to keep my files backed up to avoid mass data loss. Take the battery out, let it sit, try sliding it back in. I told myself that this routine would work just fine for a couple more months. When I told the technicians in the computer store that you "click" occasionally while booting up, they stared at me as if I resurrected a corpse from 1899.
"It's pretty much done," they said, confirming your retirement.
You put almost as much work into getting me through college as I did. Thank you for your companionship during the worst of assignments, for blasting my iTunes and Netflix when I needed a break, and for treasuring my files like the Library of Alexandria sat within your memory. Happy retirement to you, MacBook, and thank you for your loyalty.
