In Which My Situation Actually Gets Worse

Yesterday was so horrible that I just don’t even know where to begin.

I’ll just say that at approximately 2:00 p.m. CST, on Monday, Pinky, my less-than-one-month-old laptop, my PRIDE AND JOY, died on my end table.

I turned Pinky off and on; I control-alt-deleted. I did Lamaze breathing, rapidly fanned my face (and Pinky’s) with my hands and choked back sobs.

I went through the five stages of death:

Anger: Freakingpieceofcrapmother*&%$pieceof$h!t…

Denial: This is not even what it looks like…no! Why, laptops this young don’t JUST DIE. Whoever heard of Sudden Infant Laptop Death Syndrome? (insert weak, nervous unconvincing chuckle here)

Bargaining: Okay, so I didn’t mail the St. Jude’s check, okay? I’m sorry, I’M SORRY! It was a BAD TIME for me. Bad, I tell you!

Depression: I’m JOB! I swear to god, I’m the female Job!

Acceptance: (This was a very short stage of not more than a second or two when I briefly considered the worst which was followed almost immediately by…)

Panic.

Okay, so, in my case there were six stages of death. There were words on Pinky’s screen, but it was so traumatic that I couldn’t actually tell you what they were. Mostly the screen was eerily black.

After a couple (twelve) of unsuccessful re-booting attempts, I knew the situation was: a) critical and b) way beyond my technical skills (read: more complicated than hitting “on” or “off”).

I gathered Pinky and her power cord in my arms and sprinted to the car.

We roared out of the driveway, me still very deeply in the throes of Stage Six and Pinky in the early stages of rigor mortis. I drove to a computer fix-it place and found an older woman who looked decidedly low tech at a reception desk.

RECEPTION LADY
Can I help you?

ME
(Cradling Pinky in my arms my voice shaking a little..)
My laptop is…sick.

RECEPTION LADY
(Fishes a clipboard from the far reaches of a deep desk drawer.)
Name?

ME
Okay, this? This would be an E-MERG-EN-CY. (I paused between syllables for effect.)

RECEPTION LADY
(Looks at me uncomprehendingly.)

ME
Pinky needs help. NOW.

RECEPTION LADY
Pinky?

ME
(I turn Pinky so she can see the pink lid that was up to now pressed to my chest.)

RECEPTION LADY
We can’t possibly fix, um, your computer until tomorrow.

ME
(Already sprinting back to my car.)

I drove to another possible tech support place where I was given the news that I’d need my “System Restore Disk”. Which? As far as I knew, I’d never laid eyes on and even if I had, it would, at best, be moldering away in a hastily packed unlabeled box at the new place or, worse, still at the Cave of Despair.

NOoooooooooooo!

It was at this point that I finally called Someone Who Knows from my car which I was at this point driving aimlessly around town, a crumpled Pinky in the passenger seat.

One Who Knows
Hello?

ME
It’s Pinky!

OWK
Pinky?

ME
She’s dead…DEAD!

OWK
What happened…

ME
Pinky died. On the end table! All of a sudden!

OWK
Okay, where are you?

ME
Car! Pinky’s here with me! They said I need a System Restore Disk! I have NO IDEA where my…

OWK
What happened when Pinky died?

ME
There were words, gray ones! Gray words on a black screen!

OWK
What did the words say?

ME
BAD THINGS! Do you have a System Restore Disk?

OWK
You don’t need a system restore disk. You need Dell Tech Support.

ME
NOOOOOOOOOOO! Not THAT. ANYTHING but that! It’ll take days!

OWK
No, it won’t. That’s a brand new machine. They can fix it over the phone while you press the buttons.

ME
NO! I can’t!

OWK
You can.

ME
NO!

OWK
You have to.

ME
Really?

OWK
Really. Now, do you have a pen? I’m going to give you the phone number.

ME
(By now carrying Pinky back into the house from the driveway. I found a pen in a drawer and, finally, moved beyond Stage Six and into a state of extremely agitated resignation.)
Okay, give me the number. I’m ready.

In the end, it took about twenty minutes on the line with tech support to resuscitate Pinky. I had to do a complete System Restore and lost all the documents I had created and saved on my hard drive since just before Christmas when Pinky arrived.

Of course I’d recorded all recent important information like my new phone number and password to my wireless network on my hard drive, so I was without internet access for ONE WHOLE NIGHT.

Fortunately, I was distracted with Wii and some delicious chili and by around 1PM today I was once again connected to the world wide web.

As of right now, I’m back up and running and hoping to stay that way for a very, very long time.

With the exception of the missing documents, Pinky seems to have sustained no permanent damage from the incident and, as far as I can tell, she has absolutely no recollection of the terrifying events of yesterday and our harrowing dash for salvation.

The same salvation that was to be had via a simple cell phone call I could have made from my living room to begin with.

Ain't it the way?