Thank you all and the computer, too

Among the joys of Thanksgiving this year we on the editorial page could not omit gratitude for all those readers who don't actually want to lock us up. We are also grateful that the computer screen on which we now write is not glaring at us with the words "fatal error!"

This is the computer's delicate way of noting that we have pressed our buttons in a manner to keep us from doing what we want. We may have made the transition away from the old typewriter as smoothly as the Reagan team in Washington, but we remain thankful for any forbearance by the new system.

At this moment our appreciation overflows because the screen does not say, "Store for reboot!" No, this has nothing to do with the return of the cowboy. It is not a command for USm to reboot, restirrup, and a ride a different editorial gulch. It is a command to stop in our tracks and relinquish everything we have written to the maw of the computer until itm can be rebooted, whatever that means. Usually the operation doesn't take too long, and then we actually get back our almost deathless prose.

Especially if we have been dutifully pressing the "savit" (save it) button. Right now our gratitude knows no bounds because nothing has been taken away from us since the last time we pressed "savit."

Do these by any chance strike you as possibly negative reasons for thanks? And definitely narrow or even special-interest ones? We dare to offer then in the hope of some fellow feeling from those with similar reasons in their own parts of the forest.

Is there not a thanks constituency for the snow that did not arrive before the snow tires were on, the Yuletide music that did not begin at the shopping mall before Thanksgiving, the disappearance of the endangered lousewort that did not take place, the offspring at yesterday's table who did not say, "I'm grateful for, you know, I mean, like, well. . . ."

"Store for reboot!" m