Answer: A speech impediment.
Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision
bleary, system manuals piled high and wasted paper on the
floor, longing for the warmth of bedsheets, still I sat
there, doing spreadsheets: Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer. Typing with a steady hand,
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to
store, only this and nothing more.
Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring,
fearing, doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet
to churn some more. "Save!" I said, "you cursed mother! Save
my data from before!" One thing did the phosphors answer,
only this and nothing more, Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully, I weighed the choices as the disk made impish
noises. The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me
to type some more. Clearly I must press a key, choosing one
and nothing more, From Choose "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
With my fingers pale and trembling slowly toward the
keyboard bending, longing for a happy ending, hoping all
would be restored, praying for some guarantee timidly I
pressed a key. But on the screen there still persisted
words appearing as before. ghastly grim they blinked and
taunted, haunted, as my patience wore, Saying "Abort, Retry,
Ignore?"
I tried to catch the chips off-guard -- I pressed again, but
twice as hard. I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged
and cried and then I swore. Now in desperation, trying
random combinations, still there came the incantation, just
as senseless as before. Cursor blinking, angrily winking,
blinking nonsense as before. Reading, "Abort, Retry,
Ignore?"
There I sat, distraught, exhausted by my own machine,
accosted getting up I turned away and paced across the
office floor. And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning
bolt cut through the night. A gasp of horror overtook me,
shook me to my core. The lightning zapped my previous data,
lost and gone forevermore. Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
To this day I do not know the place to which lost data goes.
What demonic nether world is wrought where data will be
stored, beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether,
into black holes? But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus,
Ashton-Tate and more, you will one day be left to wander,
lost on some plutonian shore, Pleading, "Abort, Retry,
Ignore?" (author unknown)