Mom, Dad, I know the feeling

Last night, while I was painting the town a little shade of rose, my mom called and left a message about how her delete key on her computer wasn't working anymore. And seeing how I fixed it the last time (I did?) could I give her a hand. When I got the message it was too late to enter into the wrangle of tech support via phone on an operating system I know nothing about. So I went to bed.

This morning I called. I listened... It was Outlook Express rearing its ugly head. An application I don't use layered on an OS I don't know. Bring it on. I called up www.yahoo.com. The first advice seemed almost familiar, but work heavy to related over the phone. So, I improvised and managed to make things worse. THANK GOD the recycle bin allows you to retrieve your mistakes.

The second suggestion seemed more plausible. We deleted the deleted messages file. Outlook now allowed deletions, but is running very slow.

The third suggestion recommended using regedit... I read the directions to my father, who was my eyes and hands on his end of the phone. There was silence. I pictured his mouth hanging, a doorway for anything baseball-sized and smaller. "I'll be over tomorrow. No worries." And so I will.

Two hours after my stint playing online support, I was in my banjo lesson. (I love the banjo.) Despite having the girls home, this was a lesson I didn't want to miss. For over this past week I had taught myself the fret board and can now s---l---o---w---l---y pick out a melody. At last I am no longer tethered to tableture, which is a fine way to play -- but not all music is relayed in tableture. I have been instructed to move on...

Arthur met us at the door. "I have something for you," was all I said as I walked into his studio. All set, I pulled out my Christmas music book and plucked out Blue Christmas. Slowly.

He smiled. And then started in discussing chord construction and minor chords and tuning the banjo a step lower so that minor chords can be more easily reached. He had me set up the Dminor chord... I did it, and then refused to move my hand to anything else -- least I forget while he created music that I could listen to forever. And when he stopped, my mouth was gaping wide enough for a baseball to fit through and I knew exactly how my parents felt earlier in the day when I was trying to fix their computer a la telephone.