The “undo” button on some computer programs is a wonderful thing. Backspace will fix a little error like forgetting that the caps lock is locked or typing fdsjkl;ty when you got on the wrong row of keys. But for really big errors, you need the “undo” button.

Sooner or later, nearly everyone who uses a computer tries to do something that doesn’t work. You are clicking along and doing the best you can when something goes terribly awry. You try to fix it only to find that your page has turned into a crossword puzzle. You don’t have the foggiest idea how to fix this because you don’t even know what you did to cause it.

Then you remember that most wonderful of keys on the computer tool bar, the undo button. You hit the magic button and everything returns to normal, just like it was before.

Isn’t it a shame that life has no undo button? I could really have used an undo function in my life this week. It seemed to be a week of evens that caused life to become chaotic and small things happened that were giant annoyances.

In a restaurant a waiter walked by trying to carry three dishes of hot food. Suddenly, without warning, one of the dishes hit the floor and smashed at my feet with broken glass going in all directions. I felt sorry for the guy, but what could I do? If life had an undo button, one click and all the pieces of broken glass would fly back to the tray and reassemble themselves. Instead, the glass and food had to be cleaned up.

Earlier this week, honey and I had a flat tire. We were on the Interstate in the middle of rush hour traffic. An undo button would really have been handy here. One click of the undo button and the hole in the tire would magically heal and we could go on our merry way. Instead, the emergency highway incident truck took care of us and later we bought a new tire.

I could also have used an undo button when I missed my exit on the Interstate and had to go miles out of my way to get where I was going. One zap of an undo button and I could have a second chance to try to do it right. Of course, the exit was off I-40 instead of I-24, which had a lot to do with me missing it. Hopefully, the undo button could cipher that. 

An undo button would be a great thing to have around the house. Smudges and dust that accumulate in a week could be zapped away and I  wouldn’t have to spend the entire weekend cleaning. Wouldn’t it be great to hit an undo button, see dirt fly out the door in a whirlwind, the dishes hop from the sink back into the cabinet, and the beds make up themselves?

I sometimes comment about how elevators have no undo button. It seems that would be a much easier problem for technology than an undo button for life. Press a button on the elevator and you are going to that floor whether you made a mistake or not. Life is sort of the same way.

But even undo buttons have their limits. If you make too many mistakes, undo only will undo a limited number of the most recent ones. If life gets really out of kilter before you notice, you might be out of luck even if life did have an undo button.

Whoops! I need to go now. I’ve spilled my coffee. I tried the undo button on my word processing program, but only it only deleted a comma. Unfortunately, the undo button for life has not yet been invented and I will have to clean up this mess the hard way.

Copyright 2012 Sheila Moss