I sat down at the computer this morning to discover that about 60,000 of my emails were missing. I had them all neatly divided into about 20 folders according to category, from business, to banking, to family history and friends.
The proper response to something like this, of course, is to go stark raving nuts and so that is what I did. I tore apart my filing cabinet looking for the name of a person at my Internet company and her email finally in hand, I sent off a sharply worded message which contained only about three Canadian “sorry to bother you’s” as opposed to my usual number. I think she got the message because I also used the words “nasty surprise.” That will tune her in, I surmised.
Then I found her phone number and called but had to leave a message. My barely contained rage properly seeped into my message which started off with an apology, of course, and I might have also repeated “nasty surprise”. The woman did not immediately call me back, as she probably rushed into her boss’s office to resign as soon as she heard my enraged voice on her message machine.
So I called another woman whom I spoke to before she forwarded me to a third woman for whom I left what was by now a familiar anger-tinged and panicky message.
Finally, the first woman called me back, after apparently having reconsidered her decision to quit her job, and she listened patiently as I raved on about my important emails and then she put me through to technical support. A very nice man then tried to walk me through the whole mess and he could honestly not figure out why my email folders were gone.
But, he told me not to worry, they would be somewhere on my computer.
And right about then, and his mentioning “my computer”, a little light went on. Sometimes, it is very dark in my brain but now and then, there is a dim illumination. Low wattage, kind of like a night light. And this light told me I was not at MY COMPUTER but instead had sat down at my wife’s machine where, of course, my email folders would never be.
I thanked the young fella, ran downstairs to my computer and presto chango, there were my emails. Almost twice as many as Hillary deleted. I am thrilled to have found them because if President Trump found out that thousands of my emails had been deleted, I would someday be sitting in a jail cell next to the former U.S. senator and secretary of state.
So, three poor women and an unfortunate man, suffered the barely contained Wrath of Jim. Which, on reflection, does not surprise me. Two days ago, my cat died.
I won’t speak for other men, but that’s often how this one reacts to that sort of thing.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
