Jen's column / Laptop

Akeelah & the Bee has been stuck in my computer’s CD/DVD drive since last May.

Have you seen this movie? It’s actually an extraordinary film. One of my favorites, in fact.

Still.

Even the best movie in the world can only be watched so many times. And this movie has been stuck in my laptop for three Minnesota seasons now. I put it in one afternoon during a marathon drive to northern Minnesota (no, I wasn’t driving) and when we got to our destination, it wouldn’t come out. It just made a scary noise. In fact, it still makes that noise sometimes — even though I've long since given up trying to eject the disk.

Back in May, I called the only person I could find in Rochester who fixes Macintosh computers. He seemed like a nice guy.

"Akeelah & the Bee won’t come out," I told him.

"You probably need a new drive," Nice Mac Guy said. "I can replace it for you."

"How long would that take?" I asked, wary.

"A few days," he answered.

"A few?"

"Five, tops," he replied with no hint of apology.

There are many things wrong with this conversation — not the least of which is the fact that my heart started beating faster and my throat got so dry that I had to cough. The thought of relinquishing my computer for more than six hours at a time is unfathomable to me.

And, yes, I'm well aware I have a problem. But I can’t imagine how my life would function for five days without my laptop. How would I research stories? Contact editors? Meet deadlines? How would I get my People.com entertainment news fix?

This is what I was thinking. But to Nice Mac Guy, I said, "Five days. Hmm. I'll get back to you."

It's been 10 months.

It's not like I've been sitting idle since then. I took my laptop to the Apple Store at the Mall of America on my way to a meeting in November. The resident "Apple Genius" — who wore funky glasses and had one of those faux Mohawks — carried it into the back room where I imagined he whacked it with a stick a few times and tore at it with needle nose pliers. (Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind to do that myself, mind you.)

Then he came back and told me he was sorry. No luck.

"What’s stuck in there, anyway?" he asked.

"Akeelah & the Bee," I sighed — then added, "At least it’s not porn!"

He looked at me quizzically.

"Not that I watch porn," I explained, quickly. "I don't. Clearly. It’s just, you know, it would be really horrible if I had something like porn stuck in there and someone else had to take it out."

"Porn?" He said, trying to catch up.

"That would be," I fumbled, "embarrassing."

We looked at each other in silence for a beat.

"So you can’t fix it, huh?" I asked.

"Well, if you left it here for a few days, we could replace the drive and get it back to you."

"That’s OK," I said, grabbing my laptop defensively. "Akeelah’s actually a really good movie…."

Someday I’ll get it fixed. Someday I'll need to install new software, burn a CD with my kids’ pictures or — imagine! — back-up my files. And I’ll call Nice Mac Guy and get a new drive. And I’ll go five days with no computer.

Or maybe not. Akeelah’s a good movie. It wouldn’t kill me to watch her a few dozen more times.