A Flintstone Trying To Survive 2024

 

I'm about as techno savvy as a sloth. Or a snail. Or maybe a gnat. Lucky for me I have my own personal IT, living in our house. She came with great references and is very affordable as long as you don't mind the occasional eye rolling.

I've written about this before in my blog but it was well over ten years ago and bears repeating. My younger kids were all Littles,  TJ was in high school. Zach and Massey were still going to elementary school, where I picked up a Lunch Lady gig to keep them in the school closest to our house, which was excellent but for some crazy reason we weren't district-ed for. Local politics, go figure.

But a Momma is gonna do what a Momma's got to do. I kept my much more lucrative job at LongHorn and waited tables at night and every Saturday and Sunday, while slinging lima beans and pear salad to the school kids Mon-Fri. I was well into my forties and by far one of the youngest Lunch Ladies. Once a week you'd have your "day" in the dish pit and have to wash all the dishes. Every  Lunch Lady hated to see their day turn up on pizza day. Who wants to scrub pizza pans for 400 kids and staff?

It was just when lap top computers were getting popular. We wouldn't have had one except that I won it off the radio one morning when I was getting Massey and Zach ready for school. I'll never forget it. The song was 'Sweet Dreams' by the Eurythmics. First caller won a lap top.

Crazy enough it was also Zachary's favorite song and video. He loved that cigarette holder Annie Lennox used. Let me remind you, he was probably on his second year in kindergarten. Yes, he liked it so much we let him do it twice.

So TJ comes home from high school one day and says we need to use a wireless mouse. 

WTF??? 

And this was before I even knew the acronym wtf.

Sounded good to me, the dogs, we had two, would get all tangled up in the mouse wire because of course they had to be by our side at all times.

So I went to Circuit City. (there's a blast from the past)

It was only about twenty bucks so I bought one and brought it home. I let TJ install it because of course I had no clue how this thing was going to work.

Worked like a charm. It was amazing!!

All five of us in the house using a new computer with our fancy dancy wireless mouse. Look at us!! We were The Jetsons!!

Less than a year later it quit working, out of the blue. I was livid. I had spent $20.00 on this thing (which was a lot back then)

I was a receipt hoarder. Get audited by the IRS and you will be too. (story for another time)

I marched into Circuit City with our dead mouse with no tail and the receipt and went to the service desk. 

What is most embarrassing is that the woman who waited on me was probably fifteen years older than me. 

I presented my receipt and the piece of crap mouse to her. She asked what was wrong and I told her it had simply quit working after less than a year's usage. 

She asked me if I'd tried changing the batteries. My response was "It has batteries?"

I know at this point  you think I'm making this up and I kind of wish I was, but I'm not.

Here's the real zinger.

She was so kind, so southern, so sweet, but looked at me and simply said "Did you think it worked by magic?" 

OUCH...

I think about that woman every single time I change a battery.

Life is a lesson. Be open to one, or two or a hundred of them.

Live and learn.

COTTON