Are today’s kids as tied to their jeans as I was when I was younger? It’s not even a matter of finding the perfect pair with just the right rise, and tight enough to fit nice, without being so tight that they obstruct your breathing. There’s more to it than that. There’s the whole breaking them in thing, where they become so soft they are like a second skin.
When you run your hands down the legs they feel like silk.
I have such a pair. They are faded evenly and by some sartorial miracle, they feel silky soft without the thinning or fraying in the seams. It’s amazing.
They do have a little problem, though. The left pocket has a gigantic hole. It’s pretty deceptive, too, because if I put my hand in the pocket I don’t feel it, but just let me put a set of keys in there and they’re toast.
Too bad I can’t seem to remember that detail…
All I wanted was a gallon of milk. I ran into the grocery store and slipped my phone into my pocket. The left one. The next thing I knew, I was standing in produce, in front of the security cameras, jiggling my left leg while I watched my phone travel down the length of my leg like the unfortunate rat being digested by a boa constrictor.
I guess I gave a show to the security personnel. You know I was super cool about it. I mean, I can be very subtle while standing in front of the honeydew shaking my leg. It was the bend and snap when I had to retrieve it that gave me away.
The most horrifying computer problem that ever happened to me occurred many years ago — in the dinosaur age — before the mouse. Before windows. Back when Steve Jobs had a rotary phone.
On the Friday before the Monday when I had to submit the final draft of my thesis to my advisor (who was a cranky old guy), my top of the line IBM personal computer running Wordperfect 2.0 crashed. It died. The royal blue screen with the blocky white letters blinked out like The Outer Limits taking control of the monitor.
I wish it were an alien invasion. Instead, it was something far more insidious: a dead power supply.
Let me set the scene for you. In those days, my dear sweet ever-patient husband turned on the computer for me and set it to where the wordprocessor would open for me. When I finished typing, he inserted a GINORMOUS floppy disk into the computer and saved it for me because evidently all that graduate education had filled my mind with so much data I was incapable (read that as unwilling and terrified) of pressing a key. It was all so complex. And that state of the art dot matrix printer was so magical, with its draft mode that was even faster than the regular mode, that I was absolutely awestruck to be living in such modern times.
Unfortunately for me, he was on a field trip, I mean, business trip to a technology conference somewhere west of the Mississippi where part of the conference included designing and launching paper airplanes into the atrium of the hotel. If you don’t read a sufficient amount of sarcasm in that statement — where my usual knight in shining armor had abandoned me for a weekend, leaving me with three very small children and a deadline to write a THESIS, then perhaps you should ramp up what you now know to have been a very high level of stress for me.
So, when The Outer Limits hijacked my computer screen as I was writing the last sentence of that interminable assignment, my breakdown imminent, I was too ignorant of the whole computer process to realize that I was in very big trouble.
Go ahead and ask me.
Didn’t you save the paper? Where’s the back up?
You know that’s what hubby asked. You also know that had he seen the blank look on my face he would have gone back to throwing paper airplanes — at me.
Anyway, he didn’t even have consoling words for me. In those days a dead power supply equalled a very expensive chunk of electronics and tacky cream-colored plastic. “Too bad, honey, you’ll have to retype it. There’s an older version of the paper on a floppy somewhere. See ya next week. Love ya.”
Bastard.
I love my husband. I really do. And because of that I will confess that when I started using computers, and to this very day as recently as last month when he bought me an external hard drive, his constant mantra is back up your stuff.
I didn’t listen. But I sure did learn my lesson the hard way. For some of us, that’s usually the only way.
I did what any young woman would do: I called my daddy, crying and out of my mind. Between sobs and hysteria I asked if I could borrow his computer. Poor guy, I must have sounded like the world was ending, and to have something with such a simple solution was almost confusing to him, but that’s all. A little TLC, some babysitting, and his clunky IBM.
Did you like this? I must give the hat tip to my friend, Sarah Reinhard, who asked this question at CatholicMom.com but I couldn’t bring myself to leave such a large comment/story in her comments. Visit her blog, enter her contest, and share your own story!
I’ve been known to do some pretty goofy things. I have an opinion about this, by the way. I think all people do goofy things, but unlike other people, I don’t mind sharing them.
For example, recently I twittered about accidentally using a quick tanning product as moisturizer. That one was definitely labeled #FAIL. I looked like a leopard. I wish I could have looked like a cougar (okay, no. definitely not).
Anyway, yeah. I had a splotchy arm that took days to fade.
Another time I thought it would be a good idea to use a leaf-blower to get rid of the dog hair in the house. Um. It worked! It removed all the hair instantly from the floor. It also deposited the hair on every single surface above the floor. Another #FAIL.
So this morning I had a hankering for a hard boiled egg. Of course, I thought about this long after I was dressed and had coffee and puttered around the house a little. In other words, I was ready to leave.
That’s when I put the egg on to boil. After a while I figured it had been boiling for an interminable amount of time, so I removed it from the heat and let it sit in the hot water for a bit while I set a load of laundry (because of course, it wouldn’t be a day in my life without laundry). As soon as I cracked it I knew it wasn’t done enough.
I hate runny eggs. I’m developing a gag reflex just writing about it here.
Unfortunately, I had already mashed the whole shell, so I just peeled it off and studied it for a moment. I really didn’t want to throw it away. I wasn’t going to eat it like that. [gag] And I wasn’t going to put it back on the stove for it to boil some more (hey, I’ve done that before — I was just late for work now).
In the tradition of leaf-blowers and tanning products, I thought it would be okay to stick it in the microwave.
Have you ever put an egg in the microwave? I’ve always heard they explode.
I didn’t want an exploding egg so I approached the situation scientifically. You know, because my degrees in English qualify me for such analysis.
I thought 10 seconds would be just enough to get it cooking and I could remove it and set it on the counter and wait for it to continue to cook itself. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what I did.
I stood in front of the microwave risking imminent danger to make sure the egg didn’t explode. I’m not quite sure what my presence watching was going to do in the prevention department, but since I live in a constant state of delusion anyway, I proceeded with the full confidence that there would be no explosion.
It worked! Evidently not only can I do laundry AND grade papers, my mere presence in front of the microwave can prevent culinary disasters. On to part II, letting the egg cool on the counter.
Hoo boy! There was a lot of steam coming off that egg. I was ever so confident that my plan had worked. This, gentle readers, is a first for me. I’ve never had a half-baked plan work out (maybe I should have considered that it was really just half-boiled).
In spite of my obvious success, I was still a little skeptical about the actual done-ness of the egg. I was certain that the yolk wasn’t quite done, so I proceeded to slice it in half–you know, just to make sure before I took a bite.
(Let me interrupt here to tell you that when I was in high school, my favorite thing to do in chemistry was make dust explosions. I don’t remember how to balance an equation, but I do know how to use an empty roll of paper towels and some sawdust for a little magic).
As soon as the knife cut through the egg I heard a pop followed by a combination of steam-cloud and dried egg yolk dust.
It was epic.
And I was late for work. I had to go wash my face and glasses.
