The best computer you'll never buy.
posted by Sarah Pinborough at 09:04I saw a cat run over once.
An ex-boyfriend was buying a new car, a big Range Rover style thing, and we'd driven over to some residential street in St Alban's to view it. I looked at the car and I remember I didn't like the colour. It was purple. Someone once told me purple was the colour of death and it's stuck in my head. Anyway, I oohed and aahed appropriately and then wandered away bored while they talked about whatever it is men talk about so seriously in these situations.
Trees lined the uneven pavement at almost regular intervals. Cars and vans were slung across drives and up onto the kerbs. I remember standing on an uneven tatty grass verge maybe ten feet or so away from where the ex mulled over tyres and dashboards and milage. Late afternoon. Sun shining. Smell of grass cut several hours previously. Warm. Bored.
I looked up. Snapshot. Blue saloon car turning into the street. Maybe not driving too fast, but definitely on the edge of the 30 mph limit. Black cat, head down, intent, running down the side of a house. I saw the car. I saw the cat. I saw exactly how the two would meet; front left hand tyre - the cat's back just behind it's shoulders.
The car didn't stop even though the driver must have felt the animal catch in its wheel. The cat didn't die straight away, but its eyes were bulging right out of its head from the pressure of the impact and it was twitching madly. I sat beside it on the kerb for a moment and then it was gone. The owners came and scurried its wrecked body inside. I cried. My boyfriend bought the car.
That was five years ago now.
It wasn't the cat dying that stayed with me. These things happen, and I've reached the age where worse things have happened. The cat dying wasn't overly memorable. What has lingered was the complete clarity of that brief moment. The swiftness with which my brain coldly calculated the distances and speeds between two very different moving objects and in that instant knew exactly how they would collide. It was an absolute certainty. I could have calmly bet my house, or at least the exes new car on the spot of the cat's demise.
If you'd sat me in an exam hall and given it to me in figures and a diagram, trust me, I'd have failed. Maths was never my strong point. But that afternoon, my brain did the sums and knew the outcome in a fraction of second. Job done. End of.
I just bought a Macbook with the help of @apdunne and @elliottbeth. We're in day 2 of my Mac conversion and I'm loving it. I'm not entirely sure what this machine can do yet, but I know that it has untapped depths and I'll never use probably even a tenth of its capabilities.
Thinking of the Mac has made me think of that one clear moment. It's made me think about all the stuff my brain can do that I'll probably never really know about. Everyone has a story like the dead cat one. Under pressure, the human brain fires up and kicks in, no RAM upgrade required. The brain is the most powerful computer we'll ever have unlimited access to. Sure, sometimes it gets bugs or chucks out a glitch. Sometimes we file stuff in it and then can't remember what directory to look in. Sometimes, when it gets too old, the hard drive breaks down and becomes irreparable. But its a wonderful thing, this mind of ours, and we should never forget to sometimes just trust it.
The Mac, the cat, the human mind...They've given me an idea for a story...
Catch you on the flip side.
me x
