Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

We had a happening at the Meister Household this past week that reminded me of something funny that occurred thirty years ago, but more about that later. This time I was trading faxes one morning with a stickler of an editor when my fax machine abruptly stopped receiving faxes. It sent faxes with no problem and made copies quickly and cleanly, so the machine seemed to be working well; quite well, as a matter of fact, having already received three or four faxes that very day. My faithful readers know I have a set protocol for handling mechanical problems, but for you newbies, it goes like this:

"Honey, the fax machine isn't working," I shouted down stairs to my wife.

"Is the machine plugged in?" she shouted back.

"Yes, It's plugged in! It was working ten minutes ago."

"Read the manual - it's got to be something simple," she persists.

"I did read the manual, but the damn thing is written in middle-English or Greek or something. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, I'll have to call our computer guru."

"Hold on, I'm coming upstairs. I'm not spending eighty-five dollars an hour to fix a ninety - dollar machine. I'll check the manual."

I know better than to hang around at times like these so I popped downstairs to check out one of the luscious peaches we had in the refrigerator. I was still on my first bite, when I heard:

"For some reason you had the device set on manual, not automatic; now try it."

Okay, so the machine worked, but so help me dear reader, I never touched the manual button. Never even saw it until my wife pointed it out. The contraption was probably sulking because I was getting the better of that semi-colon addicted editor, which is really neither here nor there. What matters is how deftly my better half set straight a balky piece of equipment; a machine - no less. Small wonder then that about thirty years ago the following scenario unfolded:

We - my wife and I together with our younger daughter (her sister and brother were away at college), had just settled down in front of the television to watch Walter Cronkite explain the evening's news to us. During a commercial break a huckster came on pitching a gizmo and saying as he held the device up to the camera," Here's a tool that no household should be without. A tool so simple that even a woman could use it!"

"What's the matter with that announcer?" my ten-year old daughter asked. "Doesn't he know that women use the tools in the house. Isn't he stupid, daddy!"

"Well darling," I said, fumbling around for an answer. "Some men aren't married, you know."

"So what do they do when something breaks?" she persisted.

"I guess they call in a mechanic," I said.

"Or buy a new one if something is really broken, right?"

"That too, darling. But it's bedtime - come give mommy and daddy a kiss and go upstairs to bed now. It's late; school tomorrow, you know."