My other half, John Prince of Melbourne, Australia, came to me on a computer link when I had long since given up on the possibility of love.

I resented and resisted technology for the longest time--I fought tooth and nail to stay in a less complicated time for years. I will look at the story of our meeting and reunion--for it was more a reunion than a meeting in the end--as a miracle for the rest of my life.

I wasn't at all sure about the new computer the day it arrived. Sure, I respected the machine as a tool, since I'd used one at work for the past five years, but who would have thought buying a new computer would make all my dreams come true? I certainly had no idea along those lines. You could call it technophobia. Machines scare the stuffing out of me.

My friend Sandy Linden, a friend from English Lit. 101 at Calvert Community College, said she thought I needed a new computer, but since I hardly ever even touched my old 286 at the time, I wasn't too keen to spend enough money to buy me a set of new wheels on another computer. I had been toying with the idea of a new car for months, but had not made the decision yet since my rusty and dented old Oldsmobile continued to serve me well, if not in style.

Sandy got to me in the nick of time. "We're going to get you a new computer and you are going to love it," she said one morning in February. Then she dragged me to the computer store in Glen Burnie where each machine looked exactly like the next. Sandy talked to salesmen for what seemed like hours, about Pentium this and Intel that, then demanded my credit card.

"I don't think this is such a good idea," I began weakly. My protests went for naught. "You are out of your mind," I sputtered when she proposed the change--and later, when she spent my life savings! I knew I was defenseless against her arguments

Sandy has a way of winning every round.

"I don't have time to learn to operate a new computer, and you know learning new programs makes me crazy," I moaned. Sandy smiled, and handed the clerk my credit card. He helped load the monster boxes in her car and waved us off to our fate.

"You'll catch on," Sandy grinned and whipped her car around the corner to my home an hour or so later. I nodded grimly. I didn't tell her she was a lousy driver, and I didn't tell her I didn't want the new computer. Sandy is a force of nature, big, beautiful and full of life. You go along with her or else.

I also didn't admit to myself the reason I didn't want a new PC was because I didn't think I was capable of managing all the bells and whistles I'd been hearing about. Windows ME is buggy as hell, the little voice in my head whispered. You'll never figure all this out in a million years ... the voice persisted, quite efficiently wearing down my courage. You are a complete computer idiot! It didn't have to shout.

If anything is frustrating, it is the realization one is a complete ignoramus about new technology at the advanced age of fifty-something. Maybe our brains lose some of their elasticity as we grow older. I don't know. I just didn't feel up to a new computer. And if I had suspected I would suddenly be thrust into a whole new world of information--and that there was a lot of it I would absorb--I would have taken a shot Sandy the first time she mentioned a new PC.

As it was, ignorance was bliss.

I had no idea I would find that either.

Some of the people at the newspaper were on the Internet around the time I was getting ready to leave for a new and less stressful career. They said they loved being on-line. I could see it as a tool for news gathering, maybe, but I couldn't imagine carrying on conversations with people around the world just for fun. It sounded like something I needed about as much as a hole in the head. Watching the editor, Samantha Hale, and her antics with her laptop--which she carried everywhere, only reinforced my opinion.

Computers were deadly and the Internet was a big waste of time. Sammy hardly showed her face in the newsroom after she got the darned thing, and Lord knows we could have used a couple of extra hands around there at deadline, but that is another story entirely.

"This thing is just going to eat up my time," I groaned and tried not to tip over as Sandy and I manhandled the enormous box that contained the new monitor up the stairs to my apartment.

"But you need this," Sandy gave me a silly One-of-these-days-you-will-love-this-and-I will-say-I-told-you-so kind of looks. She calmly unhooked the tangle of cables from my old machine and plopped the ancient monitor into my arms. "See if you can find someplace to put this while I unhook the rest of these wires." No stop for a cup of coffee, no time to take off my coat. The woman was a slave driver.

I lugged my old computer to the living room where it took root. I later learned you can hardly give away an old PC these days.

Sandy worked most of the afternoon at the task of hooking up all the right cables and putting the components in the best positions on my desk. We completed the destruction of my living room in the process. Outdated electrical equipment is not my idea of stylish decor, and it was weeks until I found anyone to take the old Epson off my hands. For a while I began to believe it would be a permanent part of the furnishings, although it was hardly Victorian and did nothing for the ambiance of my one tidy room. I had the idea in the back of my mind that if I ever did have company, that pretty room would be nice to have a place in which to entertain them. Not that I had company. I'd been on the romance merry-go-round once too often. Quiet and peace were my idea of a good time.

I wondered what I was going to do with two computers when I didn't have time to work on the one I had. But the new PC was just the beginning of the change that was coming into my life. I had quit my job and I was about to discover the world--not to mention the love of my life!

Later, I wondered if I had lost my mind.

"There," Sandy shifted in the rolling chair rescued from a country auction and clawed her shining blunt-cut dark hair back from her eyes. "Here's what you do." She clicked the mouse and a menu popped up. She clicked again and the screen came to life. It took her a while to sort out files and programs, and to call the appropriate service providers, but then I--or should I say my new computer--was finally attached to the "Net." "Now you've got your own little window on the world."

"I'm not going to like this," I pulled a chair from the dining nook next to her and began the journey. Sandy just grinned.

Think about it, the news is full of stories about the sex and violence sites, about the damage unsupervised surfing is doing to young minds. I was a little afraid to go there. All I wanted, and all I had hoped for a good long time, was a little peace and quiet.

"You are going to do just fine," Sandy said after a few minutes of pulling up this screen and that screen. At one point she seemed to be playing a quick game of solitaire, and at another, having a chat with someone in Arkansas. At last she sighed, hooked back her long dark hair and handed me the reins.

"I'm going over to see MarySue. She's got some problems with her hard drive I have to sort out. Call me if you have any problems." Sandy gave me an enveloping hug and was gone. I was alone with my new PC at last. A trace of Beautiful hung in the air, a reminder of my tormentor's passing.

I am in awe of that woman. I have been mechanically challenged from birth. Not Sandy, though. She seems to have a rapport with computers and there's not much she can't handle when it comes to technology. I just wished she weren't so darned confident about my potential.

As far as technology goes, I am a virtual idiot. Trust her to throw me to the lions and walk away.

Sandy has come to my aid often enough in the past. And probably will in days to come. But at that moment in time, our friendship was on quicksand. If she weren't a great deal larger than I am, I could have cheerfully wrung her neck for giving me a new set of problems to solve. I was trying to simplify my life, after all.

My first problem was how I was going to replace the money I'd spent on the PC, and the second was what I was going to do with it now that we were alone together. I plopped my fanny on the desk chair I'd got from MarySue when I moved to Calvert, I put my hand on the mouse, clicked on an icon and waited.

A series of menus came up. When I clicked on any one, all I got was more menus. I wondered how on earth anyone made sense of it all.

I turned off the machine, careful to follow Sandy's instructions on proper procedure, and went downtown to the library where there was information I could understand.

"Well, no one really does understand every thing, and nothing is really organized on the world wide web," my librarian Janice Stone told me. "You just have to surf it until you find what you want." I am not surfing material. Hell, I haven't owned a bathing suit for the past couple of decades.

But that machine just sat there, waiting for my attention. "You can't beat the net for research," Janice said, leaving me to browse a shelf of newly-released books. For a moment, out of old habit, I kind of squinted my eyes and pretended there were a block of three books, all with my name in gold on the spine.

The New Age gurus say you can have anything you can visualize. I am not so sure, but like chicken soup, a little visualization couldn't hurt. I am a bestselling author, I muttered under my breath. "My books are popular across the country and around the world. The movies and television are clamoring for my scripts. I will have a loving, compatible and understanding companion who cares for me deeply. I will never want again."

Some people say affirmations are an accomplished fact in the Mind of God, for me, however, they have proved to be the slowest magic known to man.

I thought about the new computer and then I got serious. A keyboard and monitor weren't going to paralyze me. I had been using them for years. A computer is just a tool. All I had to do was to sit down and use it. Luckily some clever author must have had me in mind.... Internet for the Computer Challenged winked at me from the lowest shelf of new arrivals next to Windows 95 for the Writer in Us All. I checked the two books out for two weeks and returned home with my reluctance tempered by resolve.

I am supposed to be a writer. So, the first thing to do is write something, right? Wrong.

I had a writer's block the size of Montana. Word Perfect never looked like this on my old computer. I floundered around, discovering more menus and icons. Some of them were pretty interesting. I didn't want to admit it out loud, but I got so I kind of liked to surf.

But the new PC kind of took the edge off my creativity for a while. Not that my creativity was all that sharp at the moment.... Five years of pounding out news every morning at 6 a.m. had pretty much shut down any creativity I may have had before I took the job. Now, the job was over, done and finished by my own choice, I wanted to get back to my writing, but I didn't know how. The job juggling was over, I was settled in a nice little part-time job that would pay the rent. The rest was up to me. At last! I had time to write.

And then, when I finally decided to settle down and make myself write something, nothing would come. Not a word, not a line, not a paragraph. Shit!

Days passed. Wordless, sentence-less and chapter-less, I surfed some more.

And finally, dogged by the feeling I had to change something soon, I went out and got a hair cut.

Boy, that was drastic. I never cut my hair unless I am in a deep blue mood. My friend and hairdresser Penny Green has beautiful, naturally curly hair and while I hate her for the permanent mop of corkscrew curls I can't afford, she usually cheers me up.

This time she turned traitor.

Penny just had to mention her new computer and all the fun she was having on the net.

"What you need to do is get on Solitaire," Penny said as she clipped about an inch too much from my graying, but wavy brown hair. "Then you can talk to people one-on-one. I've made friends all over the world."

There it was again. Talking to strangers! I'd just as soon not.

My mama warned me about talking to strangers--rest her soul. She predicted child molesters and axe murderers around every corner of my youth. She foretold accidents in which I would be found, broken and bleeding, dressed in soiled and ragged underwear. Mama's legacy of caution held me back for a lot longer than I would care to admit, but Mom is gone, bless her little heart, and I am still here, getting ready to start a new life--again! Hair first, then I would be ready for whatever came next! When Penny handed me the mirror so I could see the back of my head, my eyes were as green as grass. They get that way when I am excited or irritated and had darkened considerably as she waxed eloquent about all the nifty people she'd met on the chat program. My eyes got greener and greener and greener.

Excited or irritated? Pick the latter if you want to know how I felt about Penny's blundering attempt to sort out my life. All my married friends try to fix me up with their sad male acquaintances, and I'd never met a bigger bunch of losers. If you want to know the truth, all the good ones really are taken. Now, according to Penny, all I had to do was download this program and I would be on my way to finding my other half with the help of the World Wide Web.

That sounded like a swell idea. I really wanted to start off marriage number four with a man I couldn't even see.

I mean really. You look on a menu, find a name you think you like--which later you learn is really a to be a nickname--you chat a while, and fall in love and live happily ever after. Talk about love with a perfect stranger.

You couldn't sell that as a story line if hell froze over. There are no editors that dumb.

Still, nothing was happening romance-wise in my non-technical life so I found some Lonely Hearts pages and learned you can type in your specifications for a perfect mate--but don't hold your breath when you get a reply.

More than once, before I found the delete key, I was forced to play a role just to get rid of a would-be cybersuitor in this or that chat room. It came with the territory. Most of the men I met wanted to play cyberlover, but what they really wanted was to talk dirty to someone who wasn't their wife. It was safe sex, and maintenance on the relationship was low, but a gal could get old playing those games.

I considered Penny's suggestion.

Download Solitaire.

Sure. Right.

"Just try it," Pen said and hugged me as I left. "I'll send you the program. You are still a darned good-looking woman Addie Cash. "You work hard, and you are nice. Someone ought to love you a lot." She stepped back for a look at my new do. "There, you look great. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"You're a friend," I hugged her back. Even friends can turn traitor from time to time, my little voice sneered. Penny waved as I urged my wagon Betsy to life and stood, framed in the doorway as I turned the corner onto Henry Street. Her body language said she cared.

I am lucky to find I have more than one friend of that sort in my life.

The new hair style was very short. Feeling light-headed literally, as well as intellectually, I lugged my stocky, middle-aged frame to the market and tried to avoid buying ice cream ... and missed by a mile. Chocolate gets me every time. That pint of Rocky Road never made it into the freezer or home ... I got a spoon off the store salad bar and pigged out in the car on the way back to the house. Betsy didn't mind. She is used to my idiosyncrasies.

After my snack, I hit the secondhand shops to look for treasures, and snagged the mail on my way upstairs to my apartment where peace and quiet reigned--if nothing else.

Failing to think of a better occupation such as scrubbing the floors or ironing (which I avoid like the plague), I fiddled with my word processing program. I could almost format a document, but had no words to fill even one page.

A writer's block is hell on earth, the worst misery known to mankind. Don't go there if you don't have to.

Finally after an hour or so, I gave up and opened the Solitaire program Penny had already sent. It was there in my e-mail when I got home. I held my breath lest some dire virus find its way into my empty files as the program loaded.

You hear warnings about that kind of thing every day. Killer virus eats university computer network! News at 11...

I didn't exactly love the new computer, but it was mine and I wanted the use of it if I ever had the opportunity to write something again. I knew I had more books in me, asleep somewhere in the darkness of my psyche. I just had to figure out a way to get them out. Success would have been one way, but try as I might, I had no success peddling my books in the past. I wondered at times if I would ever sell my work. "I am a bestselling author, I am, I am, I am," I muttered to myself.

Faith, the belief in the unseen, when you think about it, is a miracle unto itself.

I doused the desk with spirit light as a precaution. "It couldn't hurt," I muttered to myself as the program announced its own installation. I wondered if I would know if the machine got a virus. I wondered what I would do about it if it did.

I worry way too much.

"Oh, oh!" a little voice somewhere inside my computer chirped. I jumped. The old Epson never made a sound unless I was playing the frenetic flyswatter game a neighbor's kid had installed for my "relaxation." I was kind of thrown off balance by the perky little voice.

I froze. What had I done now? I went back through the routine. I had booted up, called up the Internet browser and, linked on the net. Then I called up Solitaire.

"Oh, oh!" the cheery little voice peeped again. Cheeze. I shut the machine down and vowed to come back to it a bit later when my nerves settled down. I considered a call to Sandy to see if I had broken the damned thing. I stared at the computer and buried my face in my hands.

My phone rang and I jumped a foot. "I sent Solitaire," Penny said. I could almost see her smirk. "All you have to do is open it up and find someone to chat with."

"You called a little late, it's already here," I sighed. "I found it and followed the download directions."

"Good for you," Penny crooned into my ear. "You are gonna love it."

I wasn't sure in that moment in time if I were happy or sad about the whole procedure. The program was installed. I didn't die. After all, it had taken a lot less for me to throw up my hands in frustration in the past.

"Click on anything that blinks," Penny's voice held a note of quiet satisfaction as she told me how to access the program later. I listened to everything she said and made notes--even if they didn't make any sense.

The little "Betty Boop" voice, it turned out, was the announcement for incoming information and messages. Incoming files croaked like frogs. Friendly greetings were announced by a Tin Lizzie "aoogah! If you decided to add a chat partner, the darned thing celebrated with the sound of breaking glass."

I just love it when something new and complicated also turns out to be a little ridiculous and a lot of fun.

It gives me so much confidence in my own potential. Laugh, and the world laughs with you...

"Thanks, I think," I said. Penny said she had to get going to do the hairdos for Helen Alexander's daughter's wedding which was set for later in the day. She said she was sorry she would not be able to guide me through the first call on Solitaire.

"But I know you are gonna love it," she said and hung up.

I was left holding the bag--again.

Machines frustrate me. They make me crazy. I had downloaded a program and was about take part in a phone-line dating service. I had to be out of my mind, but I was gaining ground.

Penny is a friend. Sometimes. About that time I could have killed her, though.

I booted the machine again. After a while it ran through its programs and a little green flower appeared at the corner of my screen. "Click on the right mouse button to call up the Solitaire program." I recalled Penny's instructions.

I right clicked. I clicked on a button that promised to connect me to random users. Upon being asked for vital statistics I provided a password. I called myself Morgana from the witch in the Arthurian legends when asked for a nickname.

After all, if you are going to be someone else, wouldn't you want to be a person with a little presence and mystery? I sure did.

I aimed my mouse and clicked "submit."

A new menu for users came up.

It was empty.

Fascinating.

I have had more fun watching trees grow.

A long number appeared on the Solitaire screen and another little icon flashed. "Click on anything that blinks, Penny said. I remembered that part.

I clicked.

"Hi, where do you live?" a message appeared in a little box. The sender had a number, not a name.

I clicked the reply button. In for a penny, in for a pound...

I got another empty screen. Down at the corner was a button that read "send."

"Hi," I typed and hit the send. Boy, was I ever brave.

The little message icon blinked.

The "Oh, Oh!" gal chirped her announcement.

"I live in Texas and I like to play golf," the new message read.

Duller than dust, but it appeared to be another live person on the other end.

"I live in Calvert, Maryland," I typed boldly and sent with confidence. "I'm a writer."

"What about a hole in one ;-)?" The icon flashed again.

"I would rather not say, and I resent being asked." I returned coldly. I knew a cyberpass when I saw one.

I learned about cybersex the first day online. It sure wasn't anything I wanted to sample. I mean really, I've had my share of poor lovers, and making love long distance with poor punctuation seemed like my idea of a really bad imitation of the real thing. I sent a rejection of my own and waited for something else to happen.

Nothing happened. Nothing blinked.

I had experienced my first cyberdump. I wondered where to send the "Dear John" letter and if there is an online advice for the lovelorn column. (There is!)

Hello! The world was at my fingertips. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I clicked on a button that said "find users." Maybe there was someone out there who wanted to just chat. Maybe not. The incoming message icon from the individual with the dirty mind was blinking again at last.

I ignored it. I wasn't about to participate in any more of that nonsense. I checked out the random users a while longer, messaging some, chatting for a time with individuals whose info indicated we had this or that in common.

You know, I kind of lost track of time as I clicked on the blinking lights and responded to messages, exploring the possibilities of finding--if not a future and forever mate--a like-minded friend somewhere in the world.

The "Oh, Oh!" gal worked overtime that night.

The next thing I knew, that little menu board was full of names, and I never booted up but what I had someone to talk with.

In a way, it is really nice. You can get really lonely out here on your own. Once you get to the age you understand any relationship is not better than no relationship it really isn't so hard, but there are days when each of us can do with a friend or a word of encouragement. These friends were suddenly there at the click of a button.

I told myself I could take love or leave it.

Addie Cash didn't have to give way to anything. At that moment in time I knew I owned myself body and soul, and you know something? I felt darned good about that.

I suppose people who meet me for the first time see a middle aged woman with a thick waist and unruly hair. I'd be willing to bet they think I am nothing special.

Lord knows, I have had the sort of life most people would not envy. I grew up the oldest girl in a large family and spent a lot of my youth taking care of my little brothers and sisters. My father worked hard to give us a home, and while I can never remember going hungry, we often did not have all the things our contemporaries who lived in town had. Certainly not the stylish clothes and new shoes, not the vacation trips, not the security of a lot of things, but I had a good childhood. We had fun. That was when I learned to dream.

Oh, I found time to dream as I grew older as well, but dreams are for idlers, and I have been anything but idle during this lifetime. Something, maybe my stepmother's training, keeps me pretty busy most of the time. Or, maybe it was the lessons I learned at the little church down in LeRoy. You know the old saw about idle hands being the devil's tools. The world has changed, though.

You don't hear sayings like that so much any more.

People today seem so unhappy--despite their televisions and video cameras and computer technology. I look around me and see young women decades my junior who have already let themselves go. Their hair is untidy, muscles slack, eyes vacant. Where is the hope and faith of youth? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Am I looking in the wrong places, or has the world become a sadder, if not wiser place? I'd like to know the answer to that one.

Maybe that is why I was so surprised when my surfing dredged up all manner of individuals who claimed to believe in love, faith and the work ethic.

But then, common sense told me the web population is pretty much sorted by income--who can afford to pay for computer equipment. Heck, like I said before ... you could buy a decent car for what you pay for a computer these days. Not that I care all that much about cars. They are a means to take you from point A to point B. Wonderful when they work. Traitors when they don't. I have developed an affection for my ancient Oldsmobile. Betsy rarely fails me, and when she does decides to break down it is nearly always at home. She is fairly polite that way. And I appreciate it. Think I'll keep her for a while, since my nest egg went down the tubes when Sandy entered with my window on the world--stage left.

Still, I was surprised at how soon I became attached to the new computer. For something I knew I wasn't going to like, it got its hooks in fairly quickly.

"How are you doing?" Sandy e-mailed me a week or so later. "Getting used to being in the 20th century?"

I called her back. The instant gratification of cybertalk is nice, but friends mean more to me than that.

I want to hear their voices. Sandy said that she was going to stop by on the weekend. She wanted to help me get set up for voice communication when the time came.

"I'm wandering around in there, looking at the menus," I told her, settling in with a cup of coffee and some chocolate purchased at a post-holiday sale. Red and green M&Ms taste just as good in April as they did in December. I didn't mention Solitaire. Unlike Penny, Sandy saw the computer as a tool. Not the high road to adventure and romance.

"That's what you are supposed to be doing," she replied. I could tell she was smiling. There was that subtle change in her voice. You don't get that in cyberspace. Not by a long shot. The little typed smiley faces made of semicolons and parentheses marks give it a try, but they miss by a mile. "Give it time, you're gonna love it."

We talked about our friends--and some people who wanted to be friends--but who were definitely not going to make the final cut. "I've got to answer my e-mail," she said at last and left me with a cheery farewell. "Keep me posted Who knows? You might meet someone nice on the net. A lot of people do."

"That will be the day," I muttered to the dial tone.

I don't know what it is with the people born during the late 40s and 50s. Seems like we came to the dance and couldn't make up our mind when it came time to select a partner. Folks in our generation seems to be remarried, unmarried, or changing partners.

Some people blame it on the Vietnam War, the way it took all the young men. A lot of them died, a lot more came home damaged in their souls from what they saw and did there. Practically everyone I know is divorced or on their second or third, or god forbid(!), fifth marriages.

My father was in WW II.

You would think it was the time of his life to hear him talk about it. He did his hitch flying the North Atlantic as a photographer, then came home and got married. And he stayed married until my Mom died. Then he found another good woman and married her too. He amused my brothers and sisters and I when we were kids by telling tall tales about his adventures as an aerial photographer. He must have enjoyed (or hated) Greenland and Labrador more than most, his favorite expression to describe those areas was, "Colder than a witch's teat," which I suppose is rather risqué, but we were used to Dad, so his language didn't make any difference to us. My father was a champ when it came to cussing, blasphemy and profanity. I don't think he meant a word of it. He hasn't got a malicious bone in his body.

But you don't hear the Vietnam vets telling funny stories about their experiences even twenty years later. A lot of them just holed up like wounded animals when they came home. Some of them managed to heal themselves alone or with the help of others, but it seems to me a lot more didn't.

I married more than once, I can say that, since we are speaking of love. As I look back, I wonder why on earth I ever put myself in such a position even once, let alone three times. Only one of them was a vet, but they were all wounded warriors in one way or another.

Yep, and that left me a three-time loser. Can you blame me for looking askance at even the idea of love?