The Borrowed Laptop

My wife had my laptop computer right now, and she won’t give it up. Her laptop is broken, and though I have graciously asked someone from my office to assist me by repairing it, she has absconded with mine and moved to the other end of the sofa. The screen is turned away from me right now, so I can’t even see what she’s doing.

“Can I borrow your computer for a minute,” she had said, “when you’re done with that.” So, when I finished reading the particular website I was on just then (ESPN.com, if you must know), I was more than happy to hand it over. That, I should add, was twenty-two minutes ago. Twenty-two minutes. And I’m sitting here, wondering what’s going on over there on that end of the couch.

Okay, I just asked, and she’s playing some online game that she plays all the time on her own computer. Now, I realize this is one of her nightly rituals, playing this mindless game to pass the time. But really now, this is rather presumptuous, isn’t it? To borrow my computer for the purpose of checking her email, or catching up on some news, even surfing the web for a a few minutes – even up to fifteen minutes – seems reasonable. But playing games, on my computer, for twenty-three (yes, now it’s twenty-three) minutes.

(And yes, it’s obvious that, if I’m in fact typing this on my computer, my wife has finally surrendered the computer. So there. You know the ending. I hope that doesn’t ruin it for you. I feel the present tense I’ve employed here is still valid, as it gives the reader a greater sense of the urgency of the situation as it was occurring).

So, twenty-four minutes now – my digression took a full minute – and I have spent the last seven of those minutes composing in my head this little series of thoughts. This is, after all, all I can do at the moment, since I don’t have access to my computer. I can read a book, you might suggest, but then I would tell you that I just finished a novel this very afternoon (no mean feat in a household such as mine, what with the noisy children running around and whatnot) and I’m not entirely in the mood to begin a new novel so late in the evening when I might barely read the first chapter and have to go to bed.

Of course, it occurs to me that this series of thoughts I’m composing in my head might be interesting after all. Perhaps even more than interesting. Perhaps good. Perhaps great. Well, no, not really great. But good, definitely good, or at least “not bad.” And so it occurs to me that this is perhaps not a bad thing, this borrowing of the laptop, this freeing of the mind (and fingers) from the confines of the internet. Thank you, wife, I am thinking. Thank you. You have given me a great gift, this freedom. You have given me, with this freedom, the gift of creativity. You have—

Ah, laptop has been returned.