Despite living in the modern world and doing a lot of professional work on computers, I’m pretty poor at using technology. My biggest problem is, I know just enough to be dangerous to myself. Here’s an example.

Sometime ago, I apparently unconsciously linked the desktop of my computer to my phone through the cloud. I have no legitimate explanation why I did this, and may even have done so by accident. Despite this, my computer ran fine and I had no issues…for a while. I didn’t even know I had done this until later, as you’ll see shortly.

Last weekend, I was having trouble with my iTunes account and asked my wife for some assistance, since she is so much more computer literate than I am. I always seem to have trouble with my iTunes account. The reason it wasn’t working was because somehow I had created three accounts.

I know what you’re thinking: Shapiro’s an idiot, and he hasn’t even gotten to the bad part. I’m OK with that designation here!

Over the subsequent hour, my wife figured out what was wrong with my online account. We managed to basically fix the problem, but during all this, my wife noticed that my iCloud account was empty. The reason for this was I was logged in to my iCloud under a different account (remember, I had accidentally created three different ones). Then came the moment of truth…

While adjusting my phone settings to decouple my phone and computer, my wife erased a file on the phone. All of a sudden the files on my laptop computer began disappearing right in front of my eyes.

Click. A file disappeared.
Then another one disappeared.
And another!
And another!!

…Until my desktop was completely blank!

“Oh my God, Melissa,” I yelled (my wife’s name is Melissa). “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?” Melissa asked.

“My desktop is gone!” I shouted, now in a full-blown panic. “What did you do? Oh my GOD!” I think my voice might have cracked here like a teenage boy.

My head was about to pop like a balloon. Or maybe like a disappearing icon on my laptop.

“I didn’t do anything,” my wife shouted back, looking at my desktop disappearing like some horrible magic trick gone bad. I could see her starting to panic too as her eyes widened in realization of the developing disaster on my computer.

“What’s going on!” she yelled at me.

“What did you do?!” I yelled for the third time. Clearly, I wasn’t functioning at full speed, repeating the same words like an old fashioned phonograph stuck in a scratch. You know that little spinning circle that comes on when your computer gets stuck? That was me. I hate that little spinning circle, by the way.

“I didn’t do anything. I just erased this file on your phone.”

“Well, do something. Fix it,” I begged, still panicked.

“OK, give me a minute,” she said calmly.

My wife then – having about 100 IQ points on me (I have just enough to keep my brain stem firing sometimes) – realized that I had somehow linked my phone and computer in such a way that my phone was now controlling the computer. Ah, now is revealed the depths of my stupidity! So much for the supposedly smart academic doctor. It’s lucky we had Gary Kasparov playing chess against Deep Blue and not me or the human loss to the computer would have occurred so much sooner.

Through the magic of computers, Melissa, over the next 15 minutes, managed to find the lost files and reinstate them on my laptop. All the while I sat there like a seething idiot, impotently watching her make lemonade out of lemons.

Did I mention I hate computers?

OK, not really. I just hate when I do stupid things and turn my computer into a nuclear wasteland.

Moral of the story: A little knowledge is clearly a dangerous thing.