Meet Johnson, my 13" MacBook Pro

Before I got my beloved new MBP, I looked at my friends who actually gave their tech devices names like they were nuts. Why? Just, why? You’re going to chuck it in a few years, ten, tops. It’s only a means to access all that’s near and dear, and doesn’t hold the same sentimental value as, say, one’s first car does.  (There was a NYT article that put it well, but I can’t find it.)

That was before I got my MBP, and man, I fell in love. It can do (almost) no wrong in my eyes. Barring a major catastrophe, I’m never going back to Windows. Ever.

I decided that I needed to christian my lovely new laptop, new extensive of my mind, body and soul.  (Ha.)  I needn’t go around calling it by name, but just to acknowledge that it has become a very important part of my life. Honestly, I’m attached to this thing.

But what to call it? There’s the rub. I’ve never had a pet, and I don’t have children, so I’ve never gone through the agony of choosing a name.  I cycled through lots of possibilities, discarded them all, and the one name that kept cropping up was Johnson.

Johnson, you see, is short for BSJ, which stands for Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, aka Bloody Stupid Johnson. If you know your Terry Pratchett, then you’ll know that Bloody Stupid Johnson was the name of the incredibly incompetent (or genius) inventor and landscape architect. (One of his masterpieces is the ho-ho, which is a 50-foot deep ha-ha. Geddit?) When I was a kid, and inhaling Terry Pratchett like oxygen, I got it into my head that when I got a dog, I’d get one that was totally loveable and totally dumb, and I’d name it Johnson.  Just because.

I never got the dog.  But I did get a MBP.  And even though neither the fictive dog nor my MBP probably deserves the moniker, Johnson is the name that has stayed with me.  So Johnson the MBP it is.

Do you name your tech devices, or do you know someone who does?

– Jean AAR