Posted on 11/27/2017 5:46:21 AM PST by SandRat
t is good to laugh at ourselves and our bumbling ways; laughter feeds our souls and keeps them from withering.
Unless you are present at one of this writer’s many stumbles, you will hear about them because it is fun to make people laugh, even at our own expense. Many telephone conversations with family include “Wait until I tell you what I did.”
Let’s relive a few such stories.
It was time to buy a new laptop. Something small that would fit in a purse. With the current opus saved to a flash drive, the plan was to be able to work anywhere that included several hours of waiting.
With the help of my genius technical support guy, we ordered a slim little HP X360 laptop weighing in at 2.98 pounds. The excited writer tore into the box and unwrapped the new toy. Then the unthinkable happened. Try as she might, the blasted gadget would not open. The proud, but frustrated owner stopped short of running to the kitchen and grabbing an ice pick to pry the thing open.
As a last resort, and before damaging the new laptop, she sent a frantic email to her friendly IT guy. “The computer I ordered arrived, but I can’t open the darn thing. I need to use it the day after tomorrow.”
The guy, who shall hereafter be known as the IT saint, promised to come out to The Funny Farm the next day after work.
He hardly had time to cross the threshold before the writer demonstrated that the computer would not open. Then she handed the irritating gadget to him. He flipped it over and had it open in a flash.
“No wonder I couldn’t open it,” she mumbled as her face turned the shade of a ripe tomato. It seems the writer, who is known among family and friends for her spectacular ineptness with mechanical things, tried to open the laptop on the hinged side.
IT guy and Hubby blinked hearing her confession and then burst into robust laughter. Since making people laugh has become somewhat of a consequence of her fun adventures with machines, the writer had the good grace to join in the merriment.
When it comes to smartphones, it is safe to say this writer knows enough to endanger the well-being of any mobile device.
On the home front, we have a couple of tidy containers that each hide 100-foot water hoses. You turn the crank on the side to let out the exact length needed for various watering jobs. The process is reversed to roll the hose back into the container. Sounds simple, right?
The process should be simple for most people, but not if you are known as mechanically challenged. Did you know there is a trick to unwinding and rewinding the darn thing? If you drag out the hose at the wrong angle or try to rewind it at a cockeyed angle, the reel breaks. Hubby growled when he discovered the damage the wife left behind.
“What is it with you and machinery?” he asked with a chuckle.
Shortly after that, he found the dangling faucet cover she attempted to install and managed to mess up. “I didn’t know how to work it,” she explained with a sheepish shrug. “Just consider this my contribution to your daily laughter quota.”
While airing up the tires on her car, Hubby found the rim on one of the tires gauged with red paint. “What did you hit?” he asked with a less than subtle eye-roll.
“I don’t know.”
A week later she parked in the circular driveway in front of her office building and had the answer.
Later that day, she broached the subject with Hubby. “You know the red marks on my tire rim?” He nodded. “I must have gotten too close to the curb when I parked in front of the building.”
“So, you parked in the fire lane?”
“That was a fire lane?”
Hubby just shook his head and smiled.
I enjoy telling stories on myself, but almost everybody I encounter is defensive. If you can’t laugh a yourself, you are taking yourself way too seriously.
Hehehehe...
I work in IT, and have been on both the initiating end of these things, and the receiving end!
In the industry, they are sometimes (with obnoxious customers) referred to as an “ID: Ten-T Error” (ID10T) or the fault was found “between the seat and the keyboard”.
LOL, been on both sides, when you are on the side where you can’t open the computer because it is the hinged side, all you can do is hang your head and hope you didn’t take important time out of someone’s day...
You avoid being the obnoxious one (who gets the “ID: Ten-T” designation) because...well, everyone can screw up!
Agreed...only people who think they are infallible can’t laugh at themselves.
Fortunately for me, I am so “fallible” that anytime something is wrong, the first thing I do is look for where I may have made a mistake before I approach anyone else, and even then, I keep in mind it might be something I have done wrong until proven otherwise.
"Hubby" didn't take a look at the laptop to see if he could figure it out before they had the IT guy take time out of his day for a house call?
I would think people with low self esteem would have a problem with it as well.
I had Pate de Faux Pas just the other day!..............
When I was working, I was lucky, in that I always got updated hardware before anyone else. That was because my cubicle was where electronics came to die.
Everything in my cube failed multiple times. Computers (always upper tier business Dell), keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, everything electronic.
Local IT support and corporate IT (the chief of which, fortunately, I had known for twenty years) were baffled, and just gave me new stuff in the theory that it would last longer.
I would think that would likely be true of some portion of those with low self-esteem, I suppose it would be a function of how they handle it.
Some people handle it by submissively agreeing it is all their fault.
Some people handle it by aggressively attacking anyone who questions them.
I guess our head-shrinking work is done here...:)
me too. i often admit to doing incredibly stupid things.
Lol, true.
On to the next issue!
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