by Phyllis McCrossin
I think I’m pretty tired.
I realized this when I looked at some old Facebook posts and realized just 10 short years ago I was working as a newspaper page layout/copy editor (paginator) on the night shift at a newspaper in St. Joseph, Mich.
We had to stay on until the lottery numbers were announced sometime after 11 p.m. The winning numbers had to be put on the page and the final layout approved before being sent to the press.
It made for some long nights. And some very tiring drives home.
I could not do it now. It’s 9:30 p.m. and I’m already fighting sleep. Is that age or is it wisdom finally catching up?
It’s too bad one has to work until they are too tired to do anything else. And now the talking heads in Washington are discussing raising the retirement age to 70. That’s how old King turned earlier this month. I know there is no way he could have worked to this age in the school system without seriously hurting a few people (parents or kids, take your pick).
I also realized I’m too tired to really care whether or not King gets his football picks in on time. I used to fret about trying to download, print, scan and email the blasted things to wherever they are supposed to go.
King doesn’t know how, but he could learn. He doesn’t want to learn. And I no longer want to mess with them. I believe that is called a stalemate. It also leaves the task to our daughter. She graciously printed out the forms for King, waited for him to complete them and helped him email them to the appropriate person. I pretended to be asleep while this was going on.
I wasn’t so lucky when we got home. It seems King is the point person for our sons – gathering said picks and forwarding them to wherever football picks go. Our youngest son’s picks had not been received by the football czar — wherever he is. King says he emailed them last week.
Sigh. I tried pretending I was asleep again, but he knew better.
King went into painstaking detail about how he had emailed them and thought he had forwarded them but they had not been received, so maybe he didn’t do it right, but they were right there in the email on his phone and now he couldn’t find the email and he’s not sure what happened to it and maybe he’ll have to start over again.
This entire time I kept saying, “Give me your phone, I’ll look.” For 20 minutes. Twenty minutes of “just give me the phone.” Twenty minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Once I finally got the phone in my hot little hand, it took me three minutes to find the email and the downloads and the correct email address and send them on their merry way.
Ten minutes later I hear, “He said he didn’t get them.”
“Give me your phone.”
“He said he found my email from last week, but there was nothing attached.”
“Well, if you don’t want to give me your phone then look in your email ‘sent’ folder.”
“How do I do that?”
“Give me your phone.”
I can actually relate. The other day I ordered him some cigars (again, because he says he doesn’t know how and I don’t want him messing with credit cards online).
I had to submit proof of my age, OK, I can do that. Then I had to submit my daughter’s proof of age because they were being sent to her home – cool, I can do that. Except there was no link.
I called customer service and was told I could easily do that by going to their website, finding my order, copy and pasting my order number then go to another page and upload my daughter’s driver’s license.
It sounded like a lot of work and … I’m tired.
I canceled the order and placed a different order with another company. Being tired after all that I took a nap.
May you always have the pleasure of taking naps.
