Since my husband has also been working from home during the entire pandemic, I’ve noticed some things that I do when I’m home by myself.
Well, these are things I would normally do when I’m working at home, but I’ve never noticed them before until he started alerting me to them.
Evidently, it seems, I yell and curse at electronics pretty much all the time.
Brad came into the kitchen one day, and here’s what transpired:
Brad: Um, who are you yelling at?
Me: I’m not yelling at anyone. What do you mean?
Brad: I just heard you yelling, and no one is here but me. And I was in my office.
Me: ???
I think a minute…
Me: Oh, I was yelling at the stupid refrigerator.
Brad: Why were you yelling at the fridge?
Me: Because I had it open longer than 30 seconds and that stupid beeping started to tell me it was still open. Which I knew, because I was getting food out of it.
Brad: You can turn that off, you know.
Me: Yes, I know that. But then I might forget to turn it back on. And what if that happened?
Then I could accidentally leave the fridge door open, and the beep wouldn’t happen, and the food would all go bad.
Brad: And why is it that you’re a writer?
Me: Pfffffftttttt…
I don’t just yell at the fridge, though. Another day, my husband came into my home office and caught me shouting at my computer, while I continued to hit one particular key.
“Come on!!! Come on!!! You just did this!!! Why aren’t you doing this now???” I may have yelled.
Brad, who is Type B and laid-back most of the time, looked at me in the way he has done countless over the years, which indicates that he may just be wondering if I’ve finally completely lost my mind.
Then he spoke.
“You know it can’t hear you, right?” he quipped.
“Well, of course I know it can’t hear me. But it’s not doing what I want it to,” I replied.
Then, as if about to deal with someone holding a bank full of hostages, my husband gently leaned down, and pushed a key on my keyboard.
The computer did what it was supposed to.
“See, you don’t have to scream or bang on the keys. It’s all fixed,” he said.
I used to like that my husband was working from home. Not anymore…
A final time, dear reader, Super Husband walked in while I was angrily tapping—more like finger punching—on the screen of my smart phone because it wasn’t being so smart.
“Michele,” he said calmly. “Hitting the keys so hard isn’t going to help.”
“ARGH!!!! I keep typing in this password, which I just changed, and it won’t take it!” I may have yelled to him.
Once again, Brad took the phone from me calmly, asked me for the password, and typed it in.
The site I wanted to get into came up.
I began to wonder if my husband was having some kind of electronic affair with all these devices. I mean, come on! They usually work for me.
One weekend afternoon this winter, I was upstairs reading, and I heard my husband yelling.
And Mr. Type B never yells.
Curious as to see what had put Mr. I’m Calm All the Time and It Drives My Wife Bonkers over the edge, I crept down the steps and looked into our garage.
Brad was yelling at the snowblower.
“Um, what are you doing?” I asked without one hint of sarcasm in my voice—or at least none that I’ll admit to.
“I’m trying to start this stupid thing,” he said.
“You know that yelling at it won’t help. It can’t hear you,” I replied—again, with absolutely no sarcasm in my voice.
I backed up into the house as Mr. Happy Face was actually glaring a little at me. And I wasn’t snickering. Nope, not me.
Because sometimes you just have to learn on your own that only screaming makes things better.
Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, when she’s not at war with her electronics and appliances, writes Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore. She’s also the author of the award-winning humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
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