Fearless Folks … autism and beyond …

Have you heard the one about Meghan and her path to destruction!

Well I think you have, but this is a new one:

A few months back we bought Meghan her very own little laptop.  Remember how she likes to play with mine (been in the shop 10 times to boot). Well hers is (um, was) one of those super cute Acer ones that are lightweight and comes in a variety of super cute, fun colors…

Well one day I left her in a room with her Acer, thinking that all was good for the moment:  She was laughing along with her favorite Cartoon Network characters (pretty much all she uses a computer for anyway: Cartoon Network silly games), so I began doing other things while still listening out for her (only hearing her funny hysterical laughter!). Then after a few minutes I heard another sound, similar to her hysterical laughter but different, so I stopped what I was doing (literally freezing in motion, not even breathing—I think you know what I mean!) and listened very closely:  it sort of sounded like she was having a fun time, but her laugh was just a bit different—a little off.  So I thought nothing about it and carried on with what I was doing.  A few minutes later I walked into my bedroom, where Meghan likes to hang out and play on her laptop, and noticed a scowl on her face.  I immediately looked at her computer and noticed it was all mangled and slightly “beheaded” with wires coming out in all different directions.  Ugh!

My eyes blew open and I asked that all too familiar rhetorical question:  “What happened to it??”

(Well, Meghan happened to it, of course, and why can’t I learn…)

So I looked around to try and solve the mystery:  what could have gone so wrong—and so quickly too?  And then I saw it!  During her—little rough—fun and play, she’d inadvertently unplugged the cord connecting the power to the computer. The cute as hell (f-ing cheap) handy dandy little computer only had a 2 second battery life, so… 

I wasn’t there to help her fix the problem and she took matters into her own hands: by flipping out and ripping it apart.  It sounds so savage, doesn’t it??

So I started to think… and with a little goading by a friend, that since it was still new, and just “happened” to get broken… and since it was still under warranty…  So I thought, yes, good idea—very good idea!!

So the very next day I took the bits and pieces of what was left of the computer, along with the electrical wires hanging out and kind of conformed it to “sort of look like” the actual computer—at least a very good interpretation of it!!   Good enough! And I handed it to Meghan’s dad and said:  “Oh, here, take this back to Walmart and tell them it “broke” and that you need another one.”

He looked at it, then at me, then again at it, then again at me…

I know, I know, so I said: “ it’s okay, we’re under warranty…   just do it and see what happens, okay?”

He takes it and leaves, and I start singing to myself:  See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya! (interject some hysterical laughter!!)

(Ohhh, NOW I know where Meghan gets it!!)

That very afternoon I get a call from him, he said two managers were looking at it for a while and they finally said:  “Um, this appears to be a ‘destruction of property’” (well, hell yeah!), “anyway, they won’t give you a new one and they were looking at me like: what the fu**!  It was very embarrassing!!”

And I said, “Yeah, well, welcome to my world, buddy!”