Scream Post

I almost had threw my fist through my computer screen a few minutes ago.  I did yell at my mom, hit my table so hard it’ll hurt for a long time, and clench my fist so hard for so long that I can hardly type.  I’m almost surprised that I haven’t broken any of my fingers, actually.  I have never been so upset at anything or anyone before in my life…or even in my imaginations.  I figured it would be best to just let it out before trying to go to sleep, so here I am.  Welcome to the real me, and don’t try to talk to me right now, especially if you work for Alpha & Omega Publishing.

I’m a last minute person.  My due date for one of my assignments was today, so this morning I went in and looked at it.  I was supposed to write a report on Matthew, the Apostle and Gospel Writer, for my Bible class.  Usually, I would just throw some sentences together and throw a paragraph or two into a “report” just for the credit since most of my reports are in science and involve tools I don’t have.  This time, I was determined to do a good job.  I finished half a week’s worth of school first, putting me a week and a half ahead of schedule, then I went online and researched what I could of Matthew.  The creative juices still weren’t flowing, so I was lounging in my chair and staring off into space waiting for something to trigger something and get me started.

I absolutely hate writing “cold, hard facts” in a report.  I’m a fiction writer.  I can string together a narrative, put it to poetry, or make it an amusing magazine article, but writing a report is the hardest thing I could ever do.  That is why I’m not going to enter the Voice of Democracy competition after all.  I am going to write to the President, though, in case I can’t get his picture after January.  But that is way off topic, and I’m not feeling random.

Eventually, my mom noticed that I wasn’t writing.  I asked her if I could write it as a narrative, and she looked a little confused.  She asked me to read the instructions.  I read them to her, and she told me to write it like an interview.  That was exactly what I needed to get started, and I started writing.  I wrote this interview for two and a half hours, broken up by a visit to my brother’s house.  I got home about an hour ago, starting writing right where I left off, and didn’t stop until I was done.  (Like I said, it’s due today.)

When I finally finished, distinguished the speakers by putting their names in bold, and proofread the entire thing, I saved the document and did the most stupid thing I have ever done in my life.  I closed the program.  Now, under ordinary circumstances, that would have been what I was supposed to do, but I’d forgotten that we’d gone out of the house and just come home.  My school program was acting rather slow, so I reopened the document to make sure that it was still there.  Did I say that closing it before was the most stupid thing I’d ever done in my life?  I was wrong.  After having seen all of the warning signs, I closed the program again.  Now, I had to save the document before closing it, so that shouldn’t have been the most stupid thing in my life, right?  Guess again!  I saved it to the database in my school program, run on my mom’s laptop, which happened to be off since we’d been out of the house.  Since her computer wasn’t on, my document didn’t save.

I realized this just too late, and rushing to her laptop, I turned on the power button.  It must have only been in hibernate, because it came up a lot sooner than I was even hoping, but it still wasn’t soon enough.  Two and a half hours or hard work.  Pouring my heart and feelings into a script.  Using most, if not all of my imagination to invent a conversation with a man who died two thousand years ago.  It was all wasted.  Thrown down the drain.  Lost in Dimension X.  Disappeared somewhere between her computer and mine.

GONE!!!
I hurriedly opened the document from my assignment, but there was nothing there.  I opened my documents, but it wasn’t saved there.  I opened the most recent file, which had the same name as the file I had saved all my work as, and I was surprised.

 

 

 

It was empty.  Blank.  White screen.  Blanco.  Vanished.

 

 

 

 

Every ounce of my hard work was thrown away because the people who created this didn’t use their God-given common sense to forsee this kind of thing and save me all my frustration.  I was actually happy with a project for the first time in my life.  I was going to post it on here.  I was going to submit it to something, or maybe act it out and post it somewhere.  I liked what I’d written, which has never truly happened before, and some people’s stupidity in programming this made me lose a whole afternoon’s hard work.
Can I say “My dog ate my homework” here?

Of course not.  There’s a much better explanation than that.  I can say that Switched-on Schoolhouse is the worst curriculum ever invented and I’ll never use it again, and warn you all against the disappointments you’ll all be headed to if you don’t heed my words.

I might leave a disclaimer in the comments in the morning, but this is how things stand for now.  Did you notice something about this post?  No emoticons.  You know why?  There are not pictures to describe how I feel right now.  At least, there are no appropriate pictures.  That report was my baby, and AOP stole it from me.  You wanna show me a picture for that?
~Ariel