Mike

Ball

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January 14, 2008

Dr. Funny Guy Helps With Mac Envy and Love in the Lurch

Last week we took a trip down the old self-help Slip-‘N-Slide with an installment of “Ask Dr. Mike.” This is where my readers trust me to solve their most intimate problems, despite my sketchy qualifications to be providing any sort of advice, my tendency to wander off the question into my own ideological agendas, and my at-best vague comprehension of my physical surroundings.

In other words, I’m kind of like a male Dr. Laura.

Now, by popular demand (and since I don’t have any real column ideas this week), here we go again.

Dear Dr. Mike,

I work in an office where I am the only Macintosh computer user. All my co-workers treat me like a leper, always talking behind my back when they’re standing around the water cooler waiting for the IT guy to repair their Windows machines.

To make matters worse, when a Trojan horse took our whole network down last week, I slipped up and offered to let some of them use my Mac to get their most important work done. They acted like I was trying to get them to use my toothbrush!

So now I have to sit alone every day at lunch and listen to music on my iPod, while everyone else enjoys the camaraderie of trying to figure out how to get their Zune players to work.

I want to fit in with my co-workers, to be judged by something other than the color of my CPU, but how?

Made Lonely By OSX

Dear Made,

You appear to be a victim of Mac Envy, a syndrome in which individuals who are without Macs because of a simple accident of nature displace their feelings into an irrational anger toward you and your Mac.

I’m afraid that we Mac people often don’t help matters much, snickering when Windows people complain about the lockups and crashes that cause them so much periodic discomfort, and smugly writing off their viruses as “PC stuff.”

What I’m saying is that even though they considerably outnumber us, we need to show a little more compassion to Windows users. They can’t help how their computers were ordered. And try to remember that for every critically disabling Windows problem, there is an equally important redeeming factor that makes a PC every bit as good and as functional as a Mac. You’d think.

Dear Dr. Mike,

I’m a college student with a problem. My girlfriend told me the other day that she needed some room to “grow” and that I was “smothering her” with my constant attention. To me it seems like I’m just being nice to her and showing her how much I care for her.

So now she wants to move into a fraternity house, claiming that the 115 guys who live there are “just friends.”

I don’t know what to think. On one hand, I can’t help being slightly suspicious of the situation. On the other hand, I trust her and want her to be happy. I’ve heard that if you love someone very much, set her free. If she comes back to you, she's yours; if she does not, she never was.

My question is, am I being naïve?

A Puzzled Boyfriend

Dear Puzzled,

Yep.

If you have critical life issues to deal with, and you would like advice from a professional village idiot, send your questions to mike@drfunnyguy.com.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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