Lateshoes

So there’s this waiter at MacCool’s that drives me up the wall. The first time we met he told me I couldn’t have a half-order of sweet potato fries, which was like total bullshit, because I’d ordered the same thing successfully before and I needs me some sweet potato fries. The second time, he forced me to sit in the bar area at a stupid high-chair table. I very politely asked if there was any way I could move to a more “dwarf-friendly” table and without smiling he said, “You should have asked before I brought your drinks. I’m afraid I can’t let you move now.”

Always busting my balls, this guy.

So today, Carolyn and I sit down and the first thing he does is tell me that I can’t have my half-empty bottle of water on the premises because of “Utah liquor laws.” Okay. Then, out of nowhere he picked Carolyn’s purse up from the ground and placed it over the arm of her chair. I was still annoyed from the bottled water incident, but suddenly it clicked – the COMPULSIVE way he picked it up- like all of the little circuits in his brain might explode if he had to look at that desultory purse for one more second.

And just like that – I loved him.

I wanted to pinch his cheeks when he just had to wipe that errant bit of tea from our table and when he just couldn’t leave that one piece of shredded lettuce alone.

But, the absolute clincher was delivered with our check. The perfectly symmetrical receipts, the carefully placed pens, both evenly spaced from the center of the bill book. Sigh. Oh, Pat-rigg – we are kindred, crazy souls.

You may or may not know by now that I’m completely crazy – and if this is news to you then sit down my friend and let me explain. About 90 (or so) percent of the time I’m decently capable of keeping my “shit” together – but, the other 10 percent? Flippin’ nuts.

One of my more, let’s call them quirky personality ticks is something called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Though I’ve never been properly diagnosed, there is no denying it. Everything in my world has its place – its place according to me. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you that that book looks fine there – if it doesn’t make sense to me- my brain completely rejects it and I won’t stop thinking about it – I won’t rest until that book is EXACTLY where I need it to be. Sigh.

So, this morning when I took my laptop out of its case to find a nice (okay small) DENT on the lid – my motherfuckin’ crazy level shot up to eleven.

In the middle of the night last night, I woke up to find Io sitting on top of my computer (inside its case) so, I shewed her off and she jumped with all of her fatassitude off and onto the ground – leaving behind a small-ish, but very noticeable dent in my three week old laptop.

When I first noticed it, I immediately broke into a sweat, feverishly looking for some easy fix to my dilemma. Surely, it can’t be that hard. I mean something that can happen so easily to such a costly machine has to be just as easy to fix, right? You would think. But, no. Dent pullers won’t do the trick, you can try removing the lid but you run the risk of destroying your display – you can’t just replace the lid because it’s actually fused with an epoxy to the LED components (or something – I have no idea), so unless you want to replace the whole shebang (a whopping 800 bucks) you are out of luck. More sweating.

I don’t think I heard a word anyone said to me all day. The stupid dent was all. I. could. think. about. Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeent. There’s a dent. My beautiful, my precious….was… blemished, marred, scarred, bruised and forever marked like the girl who gets knocked up in Junior High.

How could Apple be so careless, I thought. Didn’t they know this would happen? Why didn’t they make me get one of those hard cases? Why didn’t they tell me I should sell my cat?

After many hours of unsuccessfully trying to massage, pull, clean and wish the dent away – I finally gave up, resigned to the fact that I would forever (or at least for a long while) be attached to this imperfect, banged up crackbook. I would have to answer questions.

“Oh, how did THAT happen?”

I would worry that if I ever have any hardware problems in the future, Apple would no doubt point to the scar and say, “Oh! No way, lady – it looks like you’ve played baseball with this.”

Ugh.

This little dent (pictures forthcoming – when I can bare it) had broken my heart and I was as obsessed as I’ve even been with any boy or band or film. I kept searching the internet and making frantic phone calls well after I understood it was useless.

I even prayed. I prayed for a cosmetic dent on my laptop! It was more a prayer for myself in the end, but still.

How could something so small destroy my entire universe for hours? Why do things like this get so far under my skin? I mean, other people would be mildly annoyed, realize it’s something that’s bound to happen and then get over it. Of course “other people” also watch According to Jim, so what do they know?

It took 6 hours and three episodes of The Wire for me to pull the damn thing out and type on it. But, now that I am, I realize that what I love about this computer isn’t just its beauty and design, it’s this. I get to type and tell my story. I get to read the stories of my friends and I get to connect with people I love. Okay, don’t tell anyone I said that.

Just as a sidenote though, while I’m like coming to terms and all – Steve Jobs, if you ever want to hook an OCD sister up with a new lid that would be really cool, right? Ya feel me?

Not that I’m still obsessing.

What?

Update: Pictures of the stupid dent!