Wednesday, 27 December 2017

#355 Miniature demons

My mother had become ashamed of her phone. So ashamed she was considering replacing it but not so ashamed that she'd find one in her stocking. The woman was facing a dilemma. Public opinion was by far the only reason for her discontent. This made choosing a new model impossible, since she had no interest whatsoever in any of them. A dilemma indeed.

There was no discussing it. This bothered me the most. It was like trying to fish a sausage out of a barbecue using two blades of grass instead of tongs. Actually what bothered me the most was that getting a new phone wouldn't solve the problem at all. She'd hate whatever phone she got and would complain about how annoying it was, refusing to learn how to use any of its features. There was no solution. 

Then there was my brother-in-law, Ronan. He seemed happy enough in between semi-humorous comments about how he'd blow his brains out if he ever lost his job and wife. Who wouldn't? Still, he'd had to grapple with a miniature demon of his own over the Christmas period. It was about eight o'clock. We'd just scratched all the scratchcards that mum had given us and had each won a few quid. We'd decided to cash them in at the One Stop and get supplies for homeless people.

We got bananas, crisps, chocolate, a few other bits and some baby wipes. Then Ronan drove us around Milton Keynes, looking for tents. The difficult part came when we realised nobody was home. We went from settlement to settlement with no luck. Only empty tents and duvets. Delivering groceries if there was no-one there to receive them didn't seem ideal. They were probably out begging and would be back later but we weren't sure.

In the end, we did end up leaving the goods there beside the empty tents but it was an anti-climax. On the drive home, Ronan complained that it was a shame there was nobody there. I'd tried asking if there were any other places we could check, or whether the goods could be brought back at some other time but neither option seemed worth it. We'd simply had to fail at a task that was our own idea in the first place. A rotten state of affairs. A problem with no solution.

2 comments

Fizzfan said...

Tell your Mum her out of date phone is still better than my non existent one. I still haven’t got round to getting one yet and actually have a smug sense of satisfaction about it.

Of course learning about technology is annoying because essenatially it’s as boring as talking about an accounts ledger. I don’t mind taking advantage of it but learning about how it all works?! No thank you!.....I may be a similar age to your Mum:)

Oh rubbish luck on your good deed not panning out as planned! It would have been really nice to have known what interactions would have resulted had they been there:(

Still, it was I’m sure very much appreciated when they did arrive, and possibly more so because they didn’t have to be verbally thankful to anyone. It would have just been like a little surprise anonymous gift, and I’m sure they have precious few of those.

Profound Familiarity said...

I find it intriguing that an adult can elect to do something like this and then not be able to solve the problem of how they feel about it.

The phone is perhaps a more hopeless situation since technology as you say can be daunting but even so, there's no curiosity. No patience. Just the insistence of doom. Like Chucky from the Rugrats.

I'm probably guilty of feeling like this about some things too.