#844 R.I.P. Mouse

As a great cartoon character once said, I loves my meeses to pieces.
And now they’re going away. Meeses that is.
The Gardner Group, who predicts these things, says the computer mouse will be obsolete within three years. It will be replaced by joysticks, touchscreens, and to some extent, facial recognition software.
Facial recognition… Don’t click on that tab, smile at it. Maybe you can frown at the red squiggly line under a misspelling in spell-check and it will correct the word for you.
Well I, for one, am sad. The mouse just turned forty this year. I see no reason to replace the little pest. I mean heck, I finally got the timing of double-clicking down. And scrolling… and right-clicking…
I’ve even got pretty good at clicking on the moveable bar at the right side of a page and dragging it down in one continuous movement without going crooked and having to start all over.
And since I write a lot, I’m not half bad at using my right hand on the mouse and my left on the keyboard to correct the jillion spelling errors I always have in my essays the first time through.
I said I wrote a lot, I didn’t say I was good typist.
But I am a relatively good mouse-ist. Or should I say mouse handler? And I’m not ready to let the little beast go.
Oh sure, in the old days, you would get sticky mouse balls. It’d get you cursing as you tried to move the cursor to exactly the right place.
But I got used to them in all their variety. I feel comfortable with my mouse. We’re, dare I say it, in touch. When I take it in the palm of my hand, it feels good. And familiar.
I hate those touchpads on the laptops. Fingering them seems cold and artificial. And I get a finger cramps.
I’ve developed wrist muscles for my mouse. No more carpal tunnel for me.
And I don’t care if sometimes you have to stick it in your pocket.
Every laptop should have a mouse.
Let me rest in peace. Please save our meese.
America, ya gotta love it.