Are computers male or female?

I do not know the author of this humorous yet misguided article. It is similar to many that come floating down the Internet River to flow unimpeded into Lake Larry in my computer. I need a better filter for many such events. Sometimes I believe my firewall has been drenched, deluged with a tsunami of water from “Lake Whobelievesthisstuffanyway,” and the fire is snuffed out leaving my CPU wetter than the hull of the Titanic. Perhaps if I could build a technological Hoover Dam I could prevent such flotsam and jetsam from polluting my lake Hewlett Packard Desktop.

Here is the article.

A high school teacher of Spanish was explaining to the class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. “House” for instance is feminine: “la casa.” “Pencil,” however, is masculine; “el lapis meaning the carpenter’s pencil.”

A student asked, “What gender is “computer?” Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men’s group decided that “computer” should definitely be of the feminine gender, “la computadora” because: (1) No one but their creator understands their internal logic, (2) The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else, (3) Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval and (4) As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

This gets better (my words).

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine “el computador” because: (1) In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on, (2) They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves, (3) They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem, and (4) As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The females won.

My conclusion: The teacher most assuredly was feminino – now you can say woman in Spanish - to reach such a biased conclusion. These are very creative answers. There is a huge thundercloud cloud of doubt concerning their authenticity. This sounds like an article composed by a group of computer geeks holed up in a boiler room gorging on pizza and guzzling Yingerlinerbach Beer. I have seen many such articles attributed to kindergarten students or elementary students and in my judgment there is no possibility that those students would be able to generate the responses attributed to students of that age. Conversely, I have been wrong about so many things in my life that have caused me more embarrassment than I can bear.

I love, appreciate, respect and honor women. The world would be unbearable without them. I just don’t want to be one.

Larry Vandeventer – I am a Calvertville Native. Reach me at 317-839-7656 or at Goosecrick@aol.com. Read about me, my books, and my columns on my Two Websites – Larryvandeventer.com and Rambler1956.com. I am a graduate of Worthington High School and Indiana State University.