Following Spence’s directive, “Be careful,” I cleared Christmas wrappings and gifts so I wouldn’t trip, fall, and break one of my decalcified bones. Next I brewed licorice tea in a snowman mug, set the mug on the coffee table, and settled into the Adirondack chair with my laptop. Across the table, Spence talked on the phone with our son Charlie. Outside, birds perched on wisteria vines and waited for turns at the sunflower feeder. I breathed in the peace and calm of our Christmas afternoon.
Then I reached for the mug.
The handle, shaped like the top of a stocking cap, slipped in my loose grip.
The mug tilted.
Tea splashed like a waterfall onto the keyboard.
I admit I'm not a computer expert. After coaching from my personal tech supports, Spence and Charlie, I know how to turn the computer on, use programs, and turn the computer off. However, even I figured tea flooding the keyboard was bad.
I gasped, put the mug on the table, and inverted the laptop.
Tea dripped onto my jeans.
Spence jumped off the sofa and said, “You killed it,” to me, and, without taking a breath, said to Charlie, “We’re having a computer emergency. I’ll call you later.” Spence dropped the phone on the couch and rushed to the coat rack.
I didn’t kill my laptop. Did I?
Maybe I could resuscitate it. To dislodge more water, I shook the laptop.
Spence grabbed a dirty sweatshirt he’d hung on the rack, handed it to me, and said, “Mop.”
As if compressing a drowning victim’s chest, I rubbed the sweatshirt over the upside down keyboard.
Spence interrupted me. “Do you have a hair dryer?”
I handed him the laptop and sweatshirt, dashed to the bathroom, and returned with the dryer.
The dryer whirred, and Spence waved the nozzle over the keyboard. After a couple minutes that dragged like weeks, he handed the keyboard and dryer to me. Saying, “You take over,” he disappeared into the basement.
I aimed hot air at the keyboard and whispered, “Don’t die.”
Spence returned with a small tool box. He placed the laptop on the kitchen table, removed twelve screws from the back cover, and exposed the motherboard. Blowing hot air at the motherboard, he said, “It’s dead, but you didn’t fall. That’s what matters. We can get a new computer.”
Vowing to give up tea, I fetched my Nexus tablet to email Charlie. “I spilled tea on the laptop keyboard,” I typed with one finger. “Spence says it's dead.”
Charlie wrote back. “Set it aside. Let time and tide, or a hot stove, work. If it was just tea, not much in there except water. I’ve dumped beer on dozens of laptop keyboards. Much worse. They usually survived.”
Just water.
Usually survived.
Maybe I didn’t kill it. Maybe the seventy-two hours of work I’d done since backing up files the previous Thursday wouldn’t be lost.
“It’s dead,” Spence said from the kitchen. “But, we can try again in the morning.”
I fell asleep Christmas night with “Let tide and time work. Let tide and time work,” circling through my brain.
Monday morning, I examined the exposed motherboard. The ordered array of square chips, shiny circles, copper strips, soldered dots, and random wires on a blue background looked like museum-worthy art.
Spence plugged the laptop in and pressed the start button.
Power lights stayed off.
The screen stayed dark.
He tapped his fingers on the side of the laptop. “It’s dead. I’m glad it was the computer and not you falling.”
“But Charlie said he’d spilled beer on his computers, and they didn’t die.”
“Depends on how much liquid and where it hit,” Spence said.” I’ll order you a new computer.”
I pressed the start button often during the morning. No flickering lights.
Spence logged onto the System76 website and selected options for a Gazelle computer with a Ubuntu operating system. System76 employees would have to build then mail the computer from their workshop in Colorado. For two weeks, I’d be without a computer to write stories, download photos, and communicate with a printer.
How could I publish my blog New Year’s Day?
Spence had the answer. He loaned me his old Chromebook which was sitting unused because the battery had died after six months and couldn’t be replaced. Spence plugged the Chromebook in and got a “Chrome OS is missing or damaged” message. Undaunted, he downloaded a rescue application on his new Acer Chromebook, loaded the app to a memory stick, and reinstalled the operating system on the old Chromebook. Plugged in, it functioned. Though it didn’t communicate with printers, I could still publish online. It’s inability to download photos from an SD card didn’t challenge Spence. He put my camera card into his Acer, transferred the photos to a memory stick, and taught me how to retrieve them.
I was set.
I just had to adjust to a smaller keyboard. If I typed slowly, no problem. When my fingers danced in excitement over an engaging part, I’d hit two keys at once making me chuckle over “licofrice,” “latger,” and “keyhboards.”
Manageable.
Perhaps I didn’t need to give up tea.
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