I Ain't No Millie.

There's this bloglist I went to which noted most popular blogs. I picked out one because they said it was the blog of a surprisingly older user -- a senior lady who was famous for a series of "hillarious" videos called "I CAN'T OPEN IT". I watched a few of them. In the end I thought she was a bit daft, and certainly overly dependent upon her son (who was the videographer), but one or two of them were painful and amusing simultaneously.

In each video she is visited by her son (not pictured), and has set aside several products or objects for him to open for her on his visit, because SHE CAN'T GET THEM OPEN herself. Medicine bottles with childproof caps, unusual lotion or shampoo dispensers, variously ingeniously designed products all are a bewilderment to her, except for a few she could figure out but couldn't physically pry open. The most pathetic one was a dispenser of clinging plastic wrap which --- really --- should not have been any puzzle. I wondered what was going on in her mind. In the one sense, of course, her hands may have been weak with arthritis or some such thing -- those items were legit. But the saran wrap thing???? And the shampoo bottle? I just don't know. A little monkeying around should have done it.

Where did women get that giving-up-too-quickly thing?

Fathers or mothers?
It was evident to me that this woman just shut down after a couple of attempts. And she genuinely seemed surprised when her son presented the solutions. Had her mother given up too easily? Had her father impatiently pulled everything out of her hands, and said Here, I'll do it?

Even as I balked and marvelled that she couldn't put two and two together, I could recognize something of my own mother and all the struggles I'd watched that were similar. But at least my mother's reaction was always thorough frustration, spoken after many valiant attempts, followed by: "::sigh:: ..... Some MAN invented this...."

And my father? He was the one that relegated me to "Go fetch my Phillips... Know which one that is?" status. I was most often in the "Here, hold this." category if I got close to a project that wasn't girly.

Now, after all this time and a theatreworld and art school away, I am comfortable with power tools. My grinder and earphones were well worn. I love what a welder can do. I was friends with my soddering iron. I loved chiselling. I adore a scroll saw. I thought machining my own headless screws was the coolest thing. I want to invent a really tiny sandblaster. I want to rent a flame thrower to remodel my kitchen so I can feel like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. But little tiny quiet things that say NO, in pixels on a screen, in an error box, make me CRAZY. I mean, you can't manhandle OR womanhandle it. You can't fudge it, force it, jam it, sand it, mickey-mouse it, wing it. They're just fucking little nazi boxes that say NO. NO CAN DO. Game over.

CRAP!

Tonight the internet is down and no knowledgeable person is here. I have tried to figure out our router's peculiarities, no luck. I have tried to use someone else's network. Password?? Dang.

Suddenly I am a Victorian on a chair. Eeeek! Error 3201!! Whatever shall I do? Oh, Woe, Alas. I am lost! And woe to this uncomfortable corset as well!

I thought I'd text someone to ask quickly--

But first I'd have to fix my phone, which was recently reset to factory defaults because the Network Dude was certain this might help solve my dropped calls problem. With reset, my message iTap language was all awry. I tried every menu and every list in every menu that seemed to pertain. Backward, forward, select, nope, backward, new menu, select, nope, backward. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEP BEEP can we just talk about the insanity of drill-down menus here? Hm? CAN WE?
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEPBEEP
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
BEEP AHA!!! tap tap tap tap tap tap tap (At least I'd figured out how to get rid of the damn beeps.)

But no idea how to get the iTap back to normal. Instead of typing tap tap for the letter B, it gives me aab or other choices like aaac or aack or whatever. I can't determine by looking at this from an uneducated standpoint what the hell this four letter bunch of groupings of letters could be used for. What the heck is this stuff? I can change to numerals. I can change to symbols. And back to the aaab aacc aaad stuff. I don't get it.

I give up and press my preprogrammed phonenumber for my best friend. He's THERE!! I'm saved! But -- well, no, it's a PC/internet situation, which said friend knows nothing about, since said friend is a Mac addict. Said friend finally hands me to another friend (THANK YOU SO MUCH TANG!) and everything was suddenly clear.

How easy one explanation makes things.

The difference was, I found someone who didn't try to do it for me, or direct me to a book I didn't have, or an internet I couldn't get to, but who could actually explain it. He explained WHY my internet was down most likely, in a way that stuck.

Suddenly the "Ok, now do this. Now try this" helpdesk bullshit stuff was not necessary. He gave me the full explanation I needed to figure out the rest. He presumed I had a brain. It's not that the others didn't think I had a brain-- it's just that his response was the right one because he knew what I really wanted. Most wanted to solve the problem, yes, but he was the only one who acknowledged that I wanted to know HOW and WHY. Responding to that was meeting the real need.

I hung up the phone and went armed and dangerous through all steps required.

AHCCHHHAAA! I em GINIOUS!

I blocked an attempted assailing of my husband's computer (which was really a program trying to reboot itself automatically but the ad-blocker software was preventing it) restarted my internet, looked up the manual for my phone online, and had figured out the iTap problem pretty much.... I was almost there...

I had almost climbed my mountain. It was MINE to say I had accomplished it, of course with information and input, but I had sought those, I had done it MYSELF. I was feeling so complete, and then,
Ok, well, my husband came home about that time and I had almost found it.... found the last menu on the phone for that.... and as usual, he just..... took it out of my hand, and did it.

DAMN. GIMME THAT PHONE!!!
I'll never become the "I can't open it" woman. I won't.
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