Geeky gratitude

I'll probably be kicked out of the Geek Treehouse and divested of my secret decoder ring for revealing this, but there's this post-holiday game of one-upsmanship we computer types like to indulge in. It's based on swapping horror stories about the problems we've had to sort out in our relatives' computers. I don't get to play, because Mom really doesn't do that much with her computer, my brother-in-law isn't the type to ask for help, and Dad's a born tinkerer. It's probably just as well, because it wasn't until recently that I realized how playing the afore-mentioned game would be in poor taste--at least in my case.

See, I have the dubious blessing of remembering quite a lot of my childhood. It's filled with instances of parents putting things back together for me: Mom sewing arms and tacking eyes back on stuffed animals, Dad melting the tips of the axels on Cinderella's carriage so that the wheels would stop falling off--that sort of thing. Occasionally, scolding for my carelessness might have been involved. But never ridicule for what I didn't know how to do.

They both were geniuses to me then. And so it occurs to me--nearly forty years later, 'cuz I'm usually not that swift on the uptake--that it's now my obligation to pay that back. Or forward, depending upon how circumstances present themselves.