1. Self Sacrifice

Your own health, sanity, and temperature are not important when your personal computer is around. If it’s pouring rain, you will tuck your waterproof-cased laptop under your shirt for fear that the drops are of low pH and the acidity will penetrate right through the shell and melt your screen. When something happens to it, like falling to the ground for example, you rush to see if it’s okay inspecting for dents or cracks. If this were a person, you would be laughing your ass off because they made a hilariously terrified expression before their impersonation of Humpty Dumpty. The fact that they nearly missed the jagged metal from that construction site makes it funnier because the hilarity of their expression is equally proportional to the probability of death or dismemberment.

2. Soccer Mom Arm Move

You’re on your way to work and your baby, like any significant other, sits in the passenger seat. Whenever the impulse to slam on the brakes occurs, you bust out the Soccer Mom Arm Move. This move is when you reflexively jut out your right arm to protect the PERSON next to you from catapulting through the windshield. Your laptop will not do this because it is not the weight of a small elephant. It will slide off the seat and on to the floor of your car completely unscathed because it’s sealed in a bulletproof bag.

3. Lying to Protect It

“Can I download this on your computer? Mine’s downstairs and I just need to open a file”, “No, it doesn’t have the right software to play that file anyway so it’ll just be a waste of time but I’m sure you can use the computer in the lab.” Get your illegally downloaded virus-infested malware away from my baby. It’s like the first time you were left at home by yourself by accident; as you’re watching Home Alone dressed up in your mom’s purple evening gown, you are interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. You tell the unexpected carpenter that your parents ARE at home, they’re just both in the shower and that he can just wait outside if necessary. At the age of 9, you don’t know that the lie you’ve just told a complete stranger is probably more graphically disturbing than the truth, but you’re lying to protect yourself so whatever.

4. Worried All the Time

They say that having children feels like allowing your heart to walk around outside of your body. When you leave your laptop somewhere unattended for short periods of time, you have what can only be described as separation anxiety. What if it’s stolen? What if it gets mistreated? What if someone takes advantage of its kindness? What if someone logs on to my Facebook, reads all my private messages, and owns me for life after changing my password? What if someone steals that folder named somethingnonchalantonlyasadisguiseforwhatitactuallycontains? OMG, MY CAT PICTURES.

5. Tete-a-Tetes

You will have conversations of all kinds: pep talks, venting, discussions. When it’s slow, not responding, freezing, or giving you the color wheel of death, you begin to cheer it on and pray for it to pull through this tough time. No baby, please, you can do this, don’t let me down, I love you. You will also curse it out when your file crashes anyway with no recovery, or when “Google Chrome has quit unexpectedly.” Your face has quit unexpectedly, hoe. You will ask it questions while singing along to Body II Body, what ever happened to Samantha Mumba? She had potential. She could’ve been one of the first generation of Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter offspring apeople in Planet of the Apes: Evolution. 

You will realize that you’re talking to a computer that doesn’t love, think, or care about you but it’s okay because they all leave the nest sometime. You will get over it because you’ll have the younger ones to think about.