Funny
The Raccoon Who Couldn’t Escape Vim
The Raccoon Who Couldn’t Escape Vim
Jimmy first realized something was wrong when he heard screaming from behind the dumpster.
Not frightened screaming. Not injured screaming. It was the distinctive howl of someone who had spent forty-five minutes trying to close a computer program.
“WHY WON’T YOU DIE?”
Jimmy slowly lowered his flashlight.
Beside him, the old raccoon stopped chewing on a stolen breakfast burrito.
“That’s my boy,” the raccoon said proudly.
“Your boy sounds unstable.”
“He works in technology.”
“That explains it.”
They walked around the dumpster and found the raccoon’s son, Pixel, sitting on an overturned milk crate with a laptop balanced across his knees.
Pixel was the most technically advanced raccoon in the county. He had built his first computer from discarded office equipment, two car batteries, and something he claimed was “probably not radioactive.”
His little black paws hammered furiously at the keyboard.
At the bottom of the screen, Vim stared back at him.
Patiently.
Silently.
Like a stone-faced prison guard who had seen hundreds of desperate men attempt the same escape.
“What’s the problem?” Jimmy asked.
“I opened this file in Vim.”
“Okay.”
“Now Vim won’t close.”
Jimmy looked at the raccoon.
The raccoon looked at Jimmy.
Neither of them knew what Vim was, but both understood the danger of admitting ignorance in front of a teenager.
“Have you tried turning it off and back on?” Jimmy asked.
Pixel glared at him.
“This is Linux, Jimmy. We don’t just restart the machine every time something goes wrong.”
“That’s exactly what everyone does.”
“That’s what Windows users do.”
From somewhere in the darkness, an owl muttered, “He’s got you there.”
Pixel began pressing Escape repeatedly.
Nothing happened.
He pressed Control-C.
Nothing happened.
He typed “quit.”
The word appeared inside the document.
Pixel deleted it.
He typed “exit.”
Now the document contained the word “exit.”
He deleted that too.
“What kind of program lets you enter but doesn’t let you leave?” Jimmy asked.
“A powerful one,” Pixel replied.
“That’s also how cults describe themselves.”
The elder raccoon climbed onto the milk crate and examined the screen.
“Maybe it wants food.”
“It’s a text editor, Dad.”
“Everything wants food.”
He shoved part of the burrito into the laptop’s USB port.
Pixel slapped it away.
“Stop feeding the computer!”
“It looked hungry.”
“It has eight gigabytes of RAM.”
“That doesn’t sound filling.”
Pixel returned to the keyboard.
He pressed Escape again.
Then he typed:
:q
The computer responded:
No write since last change.
Pixel stared at the message.
Jimmy leaned closer.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I changed the file.”
“Did you want to change the file?”
“No.”
“Then why did you change it?”
“Because I was trying to quit.”
“So the program won’t let you quit because you changed the file while trying to quit?”
“Yes.”
Jimmy nodded thoughtfully.
“That is the most computer thing I have ever heard.”
Pixel typed:
:q!
The screen vanished.
The terminal returned.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Pixel slowly raised both paws into the air.
“I’m free.”
His father hugged him.
Jimmy wiped away a tear.
The owl gave a respectful nod from the telephone pole.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, although it was probably unrelated.
Pixel looked down at the terminal.
“I honestly thought I was going to die in there.”
“You were trapped for twelve minutes,” Jimmy said.
“Time moves differently inside Vim.”
The elder raccoon picked up the burrito.
“So what did we learn?”
Pixel closed the laptop.
“We learned that Escape doesn’t always mean escape.”
Jimmy nodded.
“And punctuation is apparently more powerful than reason.”
“And never open Vim unless you already know how to close Vim,” Pixel added.
His father smiled.
“That’s good advice for everything.”
They began walking back toward camp.
Behind them, the laptop screen suddenly flickered back to life.
A terminal window appeared.
Vim opened by itself.
A new message slowly typed across the screen:
YOU HAVE UNSAVED CHANGES.
Pixel stopped walking.
“Did anyone touch the laptop?”
Jimmy shook his head.
The elder raccoon shook his head.
The owl flew away without explanation, which was suspicious as hell.
Pixel cautiously approached the computer.
Another line appeared:
PRESS ENTER OR TYPE COMMAND TO CONTINUE.
Pixel closed the laptop.
Then he placed it inside the dumpster.
Then he pushed the dumpster down a hill.
They watched it roll into the darkness, gathering speed until it crashed through a wooden fence and disappeared into the forest.
Jimmy put a hand on Pixel’s shoulder.
“You did the right thing.”
Pixel nodded.
“Tomorrow I’m installing Nano.”
From deep within the woods, Vim waited.
Still running.
Still editing.
Still refusing to close.
Tech Support Note
To escape Vim, press Esc, then type :q! and press Enter.
This quits without saving.
Memorize it before opening Vim, because once you are inside, nobody can hear you scream.