A Gmail tab that has been open on Kevin Wiley’s laptop for three consecutive months has seen hundreds of other tabs—some good, some bad, and some just misunderstood—come through these parts before being closed with a barely audible click.
The tab, the first one to be opened this semester, has held fast through repeated openings and closings of its fellow pages. It’s never folded like the newer, flashier YouTube and Facebook tabs, which always seem to yield within hours of their opening.
The Gmail tab even lived through the great March culling, when 15 research tabs about the economic development of Sudan were opened and later closed. No other tab around here can say that.
Sure, plenty of bright-eyed young Netflix and Twitter web pages are opened each day, but the Gmail tab knows they’ll be gone in the blink of an eye. That’s just the way it goes around this computer.
At press time, the Gmail tab was eyeing a new Google News tab, which it knows will be gone before long.