How, you might be wondering, am I going to meld three words that share nothing but a beginning “M” into one blog? How indeed? Since you asked, I’ll tell you.
Let’s start with modems, or more specifically, my DSL modem that just suddenly decided to kick the bucket a few nights ago. Earlier that same evening, my cell phone had also died, or so it seemed. The normal display was replaced by a picture of a battery, and the danged thing refused to charge, or start, or do anything. Since we no longer have a land line in our home, a working cell phone is a necessity, so I told my husband I’d be going to the AT&T service center to get a new phone.
That’s what I told him, that’s not what I did. I was recovering from a brief bout of the usual nameless bug (the one that’s always “going around”), had come home early from work and retired to the couch, and just couldn’t work up enough angst about the phone to get dressed again and leave the house.
A couple hours later I discovered that my modem was also among the deceased and had to call the technical service people for assistance. I could manage that, it didn’t involve going anywhere. Of course, I would need a phone to do it and was gong to use my husband’s when suddenly my own phone came back to life. Kind of miraculous, no? OK, maybe not. But it does confirm one of my long held beliefs: that the various kinds of machines and devices that we use to operate our lives secretly communicate with one another.
I became aware of this phenomenon back around 1991 when I was working as a typesetter in a small shop in Evanston, IL. This was in the days before desktop publishing appeared and led to a graphics-capable computer in every home becoming the order of the day. Now just about anyone can produce basic typeset materials – flyers, for example, or newsletters, signs, whatever – because the programming to do that is a standard computer feature.
But in tech world 19 years ago is the dark ages, so instead of modern do-everyhing-except-cook-dinner computers, our shop had three dedicated Compugraphic typesetting machines and another very large photoprocessor that sucked in the film produced by the Compugraphics, moved it through a long channel (5 feet long, maybe 6) of photo developing mechanisms and fluids, and spit finished type out the other end.
This machine was essential to our operation. We could typeset our fingers to the bone but wouldn’t have a product to give our customers if all those keystrokes couldn’t be translated into paper that could be cut and pasted to make masters for brochures and such. And Mr. Photoprocessor knew how important he was to the business and generally managed to break down or jam up or whatever only on days when we had major jobs due.
It was obvious, at least to me, that after we turned off the lights and locked the doors at 5:00 p.m. every day, the Compugraphics and their buddy consulted about whether the next day would be a good one for a work stoppage. Not much due? Keep running smoothly. Urgent deadline? Go on strike. Or not. If they were feeling charitable, the processor would keep functioning and let us finish the job on time.
So I wasn’t at all surprised last week when my phone and modem conferred and decided to provide phone service so I could call AT&T and find out what to do to get back online.
That typesetting shop was a small place, just four full-time employees including the owner, and for a while, one part-timer, a student from Northwestern University. Can’t remember his name. Let’s call him Reginald. Reginald was from Seattle or Portland or somewhere like that, came from a prosperous family and was only working for extra spending money.
One day when we were typesetting a job in Spanish and talking about our various language capabilities, Reginald casually mentioned that he could speak a little Spanish. Not much. Just enough to talk to his family’s maid. The rest of us were stunned into silence as we contemplated the kind of lifestyle that would include casual mentions of a maid. Fortunately I don’t think Reginald noticed that he had suddenly become the shop freak.
Having a maid would not be easy for a lot of us. A woman who lived in Barbados for a couple years once told me about having a maid there. She didn’t particularly want or need a maid, but if she, an American, didn’t hire one it would be considered very bad form, since she would be denying a job to someone who needed it and flouting the local culture.
She had a full-time job as a teacher and you might think she would have enjoyed the new experience of not needing to do housework in the evenings, but instead she was often at loose ends with too much free time. Plus, she said, it was hard for her to relate to the woman she had hired. She tried to be friendly with her and the woman made it very clear that Barbados protocol demanded a hierarchal employer-employee relationship.
I thought about all this when the student who has been coming to my home for two hours every Friday to provide housecleaning services asked if this week she could come on Saturday instead. Which was fine, except that would mean I might be here at the same time. Ordinarily I come home from work and voila, the kitchen floor is shiny, the bathroom sparkles, the living room is swept and dusted and much neater than I left it that morning. I’ve become used to that, and I’m lovin’ it. But if I’m home when she comes, like I was one day a few weeks ago, it seems very strange to actually see someone else cleaning my house. I feel like I should apologize, or jump in and help, or insist she sit down for a cup of tea. So on Saturday, I made sure she was coming during a time I wouldn’t be there and couldn’t engage in guilty hovering.
OK, how am I doing so far? I’ve covered modems and maids, now how about mice? That’s easy. Have you seen the email that is going around about the mouse who was caught in the computer printer? It includes a picture of his little mouse head, looking dazed and amazed, sticking out between the rollers. That picture (attached here) inspired a conversation with a co-worker about our shared terror of mice. We both admitted to becoming completely unglued at the sight or sound of a teeny tiny rodent, alive or dead. I’ve been known to run screaming through the house because I reached down into a closet to put something away and touched a furry little body. Dead. Not moving. Couldn’t do a thing to me.
Didn’t matter.
And there was the time I hid for 15 minutes in a bedroom while our four cats (not our current four cats, an earlier contingent) batted around a mouse who had very stupidly wandered into our home. My husband couldn’t get to the mouse to toss it out, under threat of being scratched to death by those suddenly vicious felines, so he just watched and transmitted a play-by-play color commentary until the mouse lost 4-to-1 and was gone, and it was safe for me to come out of the bedroom.
Another time, in a different place, there was a mouse that ran behind the TV every night at the same time, so fast my daughter and I never really saw it, just saw a shadow streak past. That I could live with. When the mouse ran itself into oblivion and was discovered lying dead on the floor, I started running instead and pounding on the maintenance man’s door in total panic.
So here’s what I figure. The mouse in the picture was invading the office of a maid service, and the printer conspired with the computers and the copier to nab it and present it to the office staff first thing in the morning. On the busiest day of the week, no doubt.
There. Told you I could do it!
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment