I call it the “hen house”. It is the product of estrogen “gone wild”: my former home which I left eight years ago when B1, my ex-wife, out of the blue told me that our marriage was over. Since then it has been the exclusive domain of females: my mother-in-law, B1, my two daughters, and our dog Daisy. The only two creatures remotely male are the pug, Titan, who was gilded (and as B2 has observed, is a little “light in the loafers”) and Sonny, a beautiful golden tabby.
I guess that elevates Sonny to being "the man of the house". He has a perpetual scowl on his face and annihilates birds and rodents, often filleting chipmunks alive to die a horrible death baking under the summer sun.
Let’s just say Sonny and I relate.
Today I spent some time helping B1 with her computer. I often go over to the hen house to drop off a check, visit with the girls, or catch up with B1’s latest grand scheme. She is always coming up with contorted ways of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Today was a little different in that she wanted me to help her with email.
Now when I say “help her with email”, this does not mean fixing some arcane software settings that have somehow become corrupted. Nor does this mean fixing network proxies, or rebooting the router. This means teaching her the basic concepts of how to use a personal computer: complicated things such as using a mouse, setting focus, and browsing on the Internet. You read that correctly, learning how to browse the Internet.
When you visit the hen house, it’s advisable to set back your watch a little bit, say about twenty years.
It’s not that B1 is not bright. She is extremely intelligent, witty, and fun. It’s just she has her priorities and they have trouble aligning themselves with some minor things in life: such as reality.
B1 loves to play dumb, and is the closest living being to the persona that Marilyn Monroe characterized on the silver screen back in many movies during the 1950s. I first met her around 1979 through a mutual friend of ours in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was a tall, drop-dead gorgeous Lithuanian blond, six years older than me.
She was over-the-top glamorous. She had spent many years hobnobbing in Boston amongst the elite, going to parties with Russ Frances and various other high profile professional athletes. Red Sox ace Luis Tiant was particular fond of her and for a while they were friends who partied together. According to Arthur Fiedler, B1 had the best legs he’d ever seen.
One time after we were married I took her to the Boston Symphony where a world famous flautist was performing. B1 was a big fan of his and we got front row seats right below his feet. During the performance, I started to get uneasy when I noticed that while twiddling on his instrument he was making flirting glances towards my wife. About half way through the concert, B1 piped up.
“Am I imagining this, or is he mentally undressing me?”
I didn’t want to know. The concert ended and the flautist took several bows, finishing with a dramatic one unambiguously directed to my wife. A thousand heads turned towards us trying to figure out who we were and why B1 was the focus of his attention.
B1 turned pure crimson. “Get me the hell out of here.”
Horny little French bastard. It still pisses me off.
Back to the hen house:
About two or three years ago after listening to my advice since we divorced B1 bought her first computer. For a day or two it stayed in a box, and then disappeared into a closet. This is not surprising.
Her beauty aides never are out of reach twenty-four hours a day. Take away her right eyebrow anti-wrinkle cream and she will have a meltdown. Take away her computer, and it can wait a while, say half a decade.
Today, when I went over to the house I saw that it had been dragged from the closet.
B1: “Would you mind setting that thing up for me?”
Me: “You mean the computer?”
B1: “Yes. I need it to type up my resume.”
Me: “Sure, where do you want it to go?”
B1: “Probably on the desk. Do we really need both of these things?” She points to the computer tower and the monitor. When it comes to technological jargon, the word "thing" seems to serve her like a Swiss army knife.
Me: “It would help. Where’s the mouse?”
B1: “I’m not sure. I think it is in another closet somewhere. Let me go look.”
I was sorely tempted to ask how the mouse and keyboard got separated from the monitor and keyboard, especially since the stuff had never really been used. But I bit my tongue.
Too often these kinds of exchanges start sounding like first drafts of a Burns and Allen comedy sketch. Frankly I was simply glad she didn’t ask me what a mouse was.
I sat her down in front of the computer after hooking everything up.
Me: “Okay. Now push that big button.”
B1: “This one?”
Me: “Yup”.
The machine powered up and she was almost rigid, intensely focused as if the machine were about to lift off to a trajectory towards Mars. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be around someone who is computer illiterate. The whole experience was somewhat anthropological, like being the first white person young kids see in some remote tribe in Zambia.
Unfortunately Adie had played with the computer the day B1 first got it, and loaded it up with AOL Instant Messenger and lots of other interactive stuff. So as the machine was booting B1 was constantly be confronted with pop-ups.
Every time some new window would appear out of nowhere she would squeal, like Betty Boop getting goosed on a late Saturday night.
Then she would laugh and say, “What do I do now?”
Me: “Just close it.”
B1: “What does that mean?”
Me: “See that little red box with an X in the corner. Move the mouse over it and click.”
The box disappeared. B1 almost jumped out of her seat.
B1: “Oooh! Where did it go?”
She stumped me there. She does have this uncanny knack for asking obvious questions that are impossible to answer.
Me: ”It’s dead. You just killed it.”
B1 was having trouble disambiguating the context of all of the pop-ups. For her each window was simply another annoying thing from The Computer.
B1: “The computer is asking me for a password”.
Me: “That’s just Adie’s AOL Instant Messenger.”
B1: “What’s that?”
Me: “Another thing you want to kill.”
B1: She laughed. “Oh okay.” She positioned the mouse with the concentration of a Army sniper and clicked the button. “Oooh!” There was another slight jump, but not so high as the last. We were making progress.
After about an hour of this, she got to the point where she could turn on the machine, find the Internet Explorer icon, get to Hotmail, and send an email to her daughters. I made her do it twice, saving me another trip in one day. Then I got the hell out of there. The place was becoming toxic.
I can only imagine JayWon’s and Adie’s reactions. “Dad, you won’t believe this. Mom actually sent me an email.”