Chronicles of the Monitor

My monitor was having some problems.

I tried to prod it awake with a gentle push of its buttons. It flickered, then went back to sleep. I unplugged it, tried again, nothing. Then I blamed Paul for breaking it, since I'm positive it was his fault, even if I can't quite figure out why.

That was when we took a trip to Best Buy, the adoption service I used to find my sweet, plasma screened monitor. The monitor vanished into the back room.

I went home, I waited. I drug the hulking, massive monitor over from my parent's computer, a machine that barely works on good days. I put it on my desk and hooked up the wires, noting sadly that it took up the full area of the desk, leaving hardly enough space for my keyboard and not enough for my poor mouse.

I waited the two weeks, then another two, waiting for my call. A trip to Fort Wayne is enough of an ordeal that I needed to be certain of the readiness of my monitor before embarking on it.

Finally, today, I staggered out of the house with my rescue inhaller clutched in my withered asthmatic hand to claim it. If they didn't have it, I would rip one of theirs free and take it home with me, along with an i-pod to make up for the time I had spent without it.

"Oh," said the pale-faced Best Buy Geek. "They junked that out. I'll get a computer person."

Thinking wryly that they should have informed me before throwing away one of my personal possessions, and that the description of a Geek Squad Member implies that the Geek is a computer person so there should be no need to call anyone, I stood with a smile stapled to my face.

Papers were thrown at me. I was handed a box.

I took the box home. And you know what?

This monitor is fifty-times better than my old one. To begin with, it has a wide screen, the glory of better resolution, and it matches my pc. I kicked the paperweight of my parent's monitor into the family room, and now I write, while the dog and cat play with the boxes.