I wasn’t always a bum, you know. It all started back in high school. I was a chump, a stiff, a geek…until I somehow managed to convince Jenny Fortner to go to the Spring Semi-Formal with me. A couple of jokes in chemistry class, a well-placed splash of Polo by Ralph Lauren, and a cheating quarterback boyfriend she wanted to make jealous: that was all it took. Then the big day comes and what do I wake up with? One of those red, bulbous zits on the tip of my nose that wasn’t ready to pop yet. I looked like Jimmy Durante. And Jenny Fortner was no Mrs. Calabash.

So I crawled inside a Samsung Q1 Mobile PC and never looked back. While my peers were going to college, finding careers, starting families, I was off at a party of one, squeezing whatever solace I could out of its 60GB hard drive, 7” 800×480 screen, and 1GB RAM. Yeah, it’s been a hard life in some ways, but an easy one in others: the only tough choice I’ve ever had to make was whether to use its 802.11 b/g wireless or its Bluetooth 2.0. Sometimes I wonder what could’ve been, if only I’d had a couple of Stridex pads. But I always stop wondering before it hurts too much.

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