Broken Laptop

I really couldn’t believe it. I tried pushing the power button several times extra just because of that very same disbelief. My constant and gradually growing belief in my wife’s expertly honed skills in pushing buttons had been shattered in one fell swoop.

I had just used my laptop about three hours earlier. There was nothing wrong with it at the time, (aside for the cracks in the case and scratches on the screen, of course.) My wife came home and went directly to my desk, where the computer sat connected and ready to turn on and use at the moment’s notice. She pushed the power button, probably hoping to read the more recent emails I go to download most days, and walked to the bathroom while she waited for it to boot. She quickly completed her evening routine of washing her face and brushing her teeth and then returned to the computer.

Seeing that it hadn’t started up she pushed the button again. After several tries she went to hide sit on the porch and listen to the water splash on the pilings under the house.

When I found her I still knew nothing of this series of events. She hesitated and tried to make small talk, but finally, quietly, she said, “I need to tell you something, but I’m afraid you’re going to be angry.”

Now, for those of you who aren’t married or are still too fresh at it to recognize, that was a warning that I would not only not like the news, but that the rest of the evening depended on how I treated her after she reported it to me. I’m getting pretty good at receiving the actual intention of that warning and I handled the information pretty well.

I worked on the problem most of the night and well into the next day, unable to sleep very well for worrying about it. Finally I realized that the power button cover for the laptop is not actually the power button itself. It merely links to and, when functioning properly, pushes down the actual power switch button, which is a much less attractive little component soldered to a green circuit wafer inside the computer’s encasement chassis.

Anyway, last night I pried the button cover out of it’s hole and reached in to the hole with a thin screwdriver to manually push the unattractive little power button on the inside of the machine. Once I saw that my little laptop friend was not permanently out of commission I began the long and arduous task of replacing all those little warranty canceling screws that only a technician is supposed to remove. (Why is it that you always seem to have a different number of holes than screws? Is that the same principal that causes you to have more dirt to put back in the hole than what you took out of it?)

So now that you know the rest of the story, aren’t you sorry for being miffed that I haven’t answered your emails or posted a blog posting in the past few days? Well, I feel better for having told you anyway.

P.S. Completely aside from my laptop conundrum, (Isn’t that a super word?), I’m reading a fictional novel based on the life of the Apostle Paul. It’s entitled PAUL: A Novel and it’s written by Walter Wangerin, who was recently interviewed by Christianity Today Magazine. He's got quite a few books out there and some of them look really good. I really recommend Paul: A Novel, though. It’ll help you understand a lot of the statements he made in the Epistles.

God Bless You!!!

Roger Engle