A while ago Doc got an MP3 player and something went wrong with it. He was convinced there was some way to reset it if we looked at the instructions that came with it but Buddy and I were sure that his technical difficulties were caused by him swinging it around by the earphones and smashing it into the ground too many times to count. Computer chips don't respond well to violence but try explaining that to a six year old. He insisted that we needed to find the manual and look up the part that explained why it wouldn't work.
So, Buddy diligently started searching for the paperwork. The kitchen, the office, the mess in the livingroom. He was about apologize to the boy for not having put it in a safe place when I took him aside and said 'big mistake'.
"He'll hound us to the gates of hell for this thing, convinced it is the only way." I said while I shuffled through the papers on my desk and found an old Fedex waybill. "He can't read and he doesn't really care. Tell him this is the owners manual and it tells you to do a diagnosic of the thing on your laptop through the USB port. Then show him some computer message that says 'permanent failure due to impact'."
Buddy followed my instructions. Doc was satisfied, if disappointed, and admitted that maybe he had been a bit rough. So he moved righto on to something new without skipping a beat: harping endlessly about Daddy buying him another one.
Resistance is futile.
