I am one of those guys who knows just enough about computers to get himself into serious trouble every time he is around one. You can search this journal and you will find essays on my love/hate relationship with Michael Dell and his company (at the moment it’s love), but I digress.
Somehow, I assumed the mantle of computer expert for my household. This was not any honor that I sought and in hindsight, in my house, it’s no honor. I think I was appointed the expert so that my Most Significant Other would have someone to yell at when she can’t connect to the internet because she selected File /Work Offline instead of File /Exit the last time she use Internet Explorer. There is nothing in the world like being awaken at mid-night with a “Wake up. I can’t get on the internet to get my grades posted.”
Not wanting to respond with a “Why is this my problem?” because I know that it would then be my problem if it didn’t get fixed, I asked, “Did you pull up Internet Explorer and make sure it’s not set to work offline. Because every time you couldn’t get on-line the last one hundred times, that’s been the problem, remember?”
Then this woman, who is the mother of my children, who has two masters and is working on a PhD looks at me like I just stole her underwear while she was still in it, said, “What? Get up and show me.”
Get up? That’s what I was trying to avoid. With as much grousing as I can muster, and at mid-night I can muster quite a bit, I go to her computer remove the check mark from “work offline” (I knew it) and grumble something about how she can be so smart and be so dumb. She sits down at her machine and says, “I’ve asked myself that same question every day since I married you.” She then smiles and says “Thanks.” I smile back and say “You’re welcome.” I now go to bed knowing that my extremely limited IT skills are supreme in her eyes. I just wish I could prove it at a more decent hour of the day.