My Computer Guy's Curious Story

No one ever counts their blessings often enough. It's usually thought of in the worst possible situations: the doctor gives an unwanted diagnosis, a friend or relative is in a desperate predicament, or--as in my case recently--your "back-up" laptop gets a nasty virus shortly after your preferred one has a bad case of malware. It was then that I realized how thankful I am to have a reliable, efficient computer person to call.

A certain scenario always plays out. I call my computer guy, he says when he'll get here, then I'm overwhelmed by a wave of both relief and panic. Relief that I'll be able to soon use my laptop again and panic at the state of disorder in our den. If a messy desk is a sign of genius, I am off-the-charts brilliant. Of course, I know where everything is. I have my numerous piles of genealogy data, vacation budget sheets, correspondence that needs to be answered, colorful "reminder" post-its accenting the above described stacks. I do my best, but by the time my computer guy, who I'll call CG, arrives, I still laugh nervously as I apologize for the mess.

Kindly, he always assures me, "Oh, don't worry. I've seen much worse." Once, he shared a story about a particularly disturbing job. He knew from the start it was going to be odd. As he pulled up to the new client's home, he saw two men--brothers--wave to him from their front porch. They raced towards him, running alongside his car as he tried to park. When he stepped out of the car, they linked arms with him on either side as they lead him to their front door. CG quickly unlinked himself and wondered what awaited him.

The interior of the home was atrocious and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a racoon run by.

"Don't worry," they told him, "We're just working on training him"

It was then that CG noticed a cage next to the faulty computer tower, complete with racoon feces all over both items. He told them that they'd have to clean up the computer before he'd be willing to work on it. They agreed and said they'd call him as soon as it was all clean.

A couple days later, CG returned. As he'd requested, the brothers had left the computer on the porch. He brought it to his office to work on it. When he opened the tower, he noticed some hardened chunks of blue powder. CG called them.

"You ran the computer through the dishwasher, didn't you?"

"We did. We wanted to make sure it was a clean as possible."

So, today, I'm especially grateful for two things in particular: 1. Having a great computer guy I can rely on and 2. Knowing there really are people with messier dens than mine.