They're my gigs, and I want them back now
LORI CLINCH Are We There Yet?
It's not as if an external hard drive was all I ever wanted. Certainly it didn't make my top 10 of must-haves. Even if it did store my data and give me peace of mind, it didn't complete me or make me sing.

I didn't know how my external hard drive worked; I couldn't wrap my mind around its innards or understand the complexity of its many functions.

All I knew was that anyone who was anyone in the computer world had an external hard drive to back up their data, and quite frankly, that was good enough forme.

Mine was a 200 GB hard drive that was PC-compatible when plugged into my USB port. You show me someone who doesn't know what that means and I'll make her my new best friend.

I slept better at night just knowing that my external hard drive was there. It brought me peace of mind that all of my data was saved in that little box and that should my computer crash and burn, I could still function in society as a regular and upright gal.

Things went along rather smoothly until my eldest and wisecracking son appeared unexpectedly one fine day and stood in the doorway of the office sporting a small red box.

It's not that I'ma suspicious kind of gal, but an eldest and wisecracking son walking in the door in themiddle of a perfectly good Saturday just seemed a little left of center.

"What are you doing home?" I inquired after I gave him a quick peck on the cheek and looked around for his dirty laundry.

"I just came to be with you, my dear mother."

"Really? You came all this way just to spend time with me?"

"Why yes, I came just for that, and oh! I'mgoing to trade external hard drives with you."

It was enough to make me want to choke on my modem. I'm not saying that he's selfish or self-centered, but as near as I know, no one has ever made a trade with that kid and come out on top. And his reputation goes clear back to his baseball card days.

"Why would I want to trade with you?" I asked with disbelief. I mean, who just shows up and plans to seize a person's external hard drive?

"Well," he said with all of the confidence and wisdom of a used-car salesman, "your hard drive is too big and bulky for you, and I feel that you might enjoy the comfort and ease of my 40 GB hard drive."

"But I like a big hard drive." "You don't even know what that means."

"I know that it means that I have a lot of memory."

"How can you need thismuchmemory?" he asked as he sat down at the computer and started moving the mouse around as if he owned the place.

"I just do." It was turning into an all-out confiscation, and I wasn't happy.

"What exactly do you have on your computer?"

"Important stuff that I need."

"And how much memory does this important stuff take?"

"More than I could ever tell you."

"All you do is write and take pictures. Why would you need this much backup?"

"I just do," I repeated.

"Do you have any idea how much 200 gigs are?"

"Do you know how little I care?"

"Mom, if this piece of paper was a kilobyte, do you know howmany pages it would take to make a gig?"

"I'm guessing more than 10!"

"How can you use it if you don't understand it?"

Seeing that he was going to use themetric system or whatever system one measures things in bytes with, I decided to throw a curve at him with all of the wisdom that my age will allow. "Do you have any idea why your little toe moves when you tell it to?"

"Where did that come from?"

"I'm just saying that right now you can tell your little toe tomove and it will. If you don't understand the concept, does that make you an ignorant person? Does that mean that you shouldn't use your little toe, or worse yet, that your kid should come home from college and just take your little toe because you don't understand the synapses involved with nerve function?"

Despite my best attempt to argue, I'm still sitting here right now with a 40 GB external hard drive. Even though that child of mine is convinced that it's more backup than I'll ever use, I'll tell you this: I'mleft of center,my thoughts are askew, and I'mnot happy.

And I don't know that I even have enough memory left to tell you why.

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.