Late this afternoon, my daughter yelled to me from another room, “Dad, dad. I figured out what Microsoft means. You’ve got to come see this. Micro. Soft”.
We had just returned from Black Friday shopping, an exercise taken for purely academic purposes. My daughter wanted to see all the Black Friday sales and shoppers, more for the thrill of it. Typically, it’s a banned shopping day in our household. I mean, what nutcase gets up to shop at 5 a.m.? Lots of people that I know. One friend hit the Wal-Mart in Fredericksburg, Va., and she still didn’t get the item she wanted. Another friend started shopping at 5 a.m., but online, spending $350 at CompUSA on rebate items. Geez. Get a life.
My daughter wanted the first-hand Black Friday experience, so the family (meaning the three of us) headed to Tysons Corner for the big crowds, but not necessarily the big sales, considering the high household income demographic of the county where the mall is located. My 11 year-old got the experience, and hated it, or at least until we found a cute Pooh critter for five bucks (marked down from $15) at the Disney store.
I figure her discovery—the true meaning of Microsoft—had something to do with the residual tension leftover from shopping.
She showed me this USB drive, with the letters “MSFT”, that Microsoft had handed out at some event. “Just add ‘i,'” she said. “Misfit. Microsoft stands for misfit. I thought you could write about it on your website”.
So here I am doing just that, with no animosity directed at Microsoft. I see more meaning in the cute observation than my daughter. For one, there is the way kids’ minds work. For another, my dictionary defines “geek” as “an unfashionable or socially inept person,” which is similar to the definition for “misfit”.
Geeks. Microsoft. MSFT. Misfits. Makes sense to me.