Remember when we had to go to the library to get information?  (And we still do use that resource – a beautiful new one at that).

If you were really lucky (keeping with the ‘remember when’ theme), you had your own set of Encyclopedias purchased from a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman.  

Now we say, “Just Google it” when we want information.  

(Photo: Flickr user, xjy)

The computer has become the encyclopedia of yester-year with the information quite literally at our fingertips.  It has brought with it some interesting challenges (okay - for some of us – ahem).

I’m in the Boomer age bracket, plus I’m someone who loves to collect words.  I have many dictionaries, several thesaurus', books on weird words, unusual words and much more. 

I have had a relationship with words from a young age.  I love the sound of them as they roll off my tongue and I’m nearly orgasmic when some brilliant word-meister like Rex Murphy, uses a word that is deliciously unusual – and is descriptive beyond belief.  

Screens do not speak to me the way paper does.  I have to squint and lean in and the glare makes my eyes watery.  It’s quite unpleasant and I have to consciously use one section of my tri-focals to focus.

I love paper, (all types, all colours, I'm not a paper-ist)  and it feels lovely as I hold it in my hands and my eyes caress the page...sigh...reading the lovely words (and I prefer 14 pt font size, due to the aforementioned vision issue) .

But I digress.

I am in the middle of a move.  I have lived happily in the same place for eleven years.   Need I say more?  It became obvious to me that I did not live with the ‘one thing comes in and one thing goes out’ rule.  Groan.

I have collected and saved words (and other stuff – and never knew I was a closet saver – OMG!!) for eleven years.  Who knew a human being could save so many words?  But I blame it all on the inventors of the computer.  They gave me an encyclopedia in my home that goes well beyond even an imagined word utopia. 

And the infamous “they” thought the computer would be environmentally friendly and that we’d use less paper.

Ah, the myth makers are at it again.

I am confessing publicly (sigh)  that I managed to save and collect eight drawers of fabulously fascinating information that has filled said filing cabinets until they are bursting at the seams.

I have purged myself down to six and I’m hoping, in the next week or so, to cleanse even more and only be left with four.  (legal sized and deep).

Just Google it.  Uh-huh.  Right.   Extremely dangerous territory for yours truly.  When I hear, “Just Google it”,   it turns “Google”  into a verb – which means action and this means I have to print everything – more action – and it goes on and on and on and my head spins with word possibilities and it becomes a slippery slope of wonderful words on paper.  I’m printing!  I’m printing!

I stand before you now (well, I’m sitting actually) and I make the following promise to the world, the environment and to me:

“I shall not print everything that seems to be fascinating, interesting, educational, quirky, cute, wise, insightful or brilliant.  I shall, instead, save it on a memory stick, or a CD, or on the computer itself in a nice tidy little folder.”

The paper has left the building.  Honest!   (Okay - so why is my nose growing?)