Dear Microsoft,

I may owe you an apology.

Here is a delightful Yiddish proverb that applies to so many situations and people. To other people, of course, not to me, never to me, and probably not to Heaven readers either.

Here is the proverb:

“When the girl can’t dance, the band can’t play.�

I am sure you understand by now that right-brained people like myself can’t get right to the point. They have to go round and round and not linear-ly like computers do. So, if you don’t mind, I will give you a little background.

When someone complains about a low grade in geometry, for example, their teacher is responsible for the poor grade, isn’t that true? In all honesty, my experience is that good teachers were also responsible for my good grades as well. I really believe this is true. I will give you a good example:

When I took algebra in 9th grade junior high school, I had a fabulous teacher. He made algebra fun, exciting, and a cinch. He was so good, I was sure I was a whiz. I got A’s across the board. I didn’t even work at it.

Then in 10th grade high school, I had Miss Parkman for geometry. She did not make geometry interesting. She made geometry insoluble for me. I suspect she did make the work as hard as she could. I never worked so hard in my life as I did in this geometry class, and I never caught on. I struggled to get a C. It was the only C I had ever had, and I suffered.

To this day, I don’t think she was a good teacher. She certainly wasn’t for me. She thought I wasn’t trying. I spent two hours every night trying to make sense of the homework. I never did begin to understand what geometry was about. It’s not only that I couldn’t do it. I had no idea of what I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t know what it was. It was like a foreign language to me, and I never understood what anyone was saying. Of course, other students did catch on, like Seymour Rudman who went on to become a nuclear physicist. Everyone in that class was a brain, a left brain, that is, and not a right brain like me.

Years later when I became a teacher and understood about homogenous grouping, I realized that I had been in an accelerated geometry class. The school system had thrown me into a lion’s den, and Miss Parkman didn’t have the mercy to pull me out and put me into a geometry class that moved at a slower pace. You see, when Gloria couldn’t do geometry, it really was Miss Parkman’s fault.

The only good thing about that experience was that, when I became a teacher, and children in my classes might be having a hard time learning, I knew they were trying as hard as they could, and I knew what it was to be in their shoes, and I did make myself responsible for their learning.

With all that being said, I recently had a realization. Actually, it was a huge disillusionment.

Well, dear Microsoft, of course you remember all my many emails to you, beseeching you to change your programs and systems to make them more accessible? Sad to say, if what this Yiddish proverb implies is true, then I must take the proverb at full value and accept at least some of the responsibility for your failures. Perhaps, instead of:

“When the girl can’t dance, the band can’t play.”

I can in all fairness personalize the proverb to:

“When Gloria has difficulty with Microsoft, perhaps she can’t compute.”

Dear Microsoft, perhaps you are not responsible for all my computer frustrations as I have previously thought, and I owe you an apology.

Will you please forgive me? Please write back and let me know.

Your new friend,

Gloria