Screw It

I knocked on my brother’s door.

Me: Do you have a tiny little phillips-head screwdriver I could use on my keyboard to open it up?

Bro: Um, let me see. Why do you want to open your keyboard?

Me: Because the letter L doesn’t work, and there’s an L in my email address, so I can’t even check my email.

Bro: Here, try these. They’re flatheads, but they’ll probably still work.

He handed me those lame-ass, bullshit tools that are pretty much large screws with a textured, cylindrical sheath for a grip around the barrel.

Well, it worked, but then the real challenge began.

Me: Why the FUCK do they put 300 screws in one little keyboard?

Bro: Because you’re not really supposed to take them apart. It’s a deterrent.

Me: Because they just want you to go, “Shit, I could take out these 300 screws that are smaller than ants to clean it out…OOOOOORRRRRRR, I could just spend $20 and get another one. Durrrr, I’m going to get another one.” And thus, they make more money on something that could be a quick cleaning fix.

Bro: Yes. Probably. You know how funny you look doing that?

Me: Quit laughing! What do you mean?

Bro: Well, there are all these tiny little screws and you’re using this tiny little screwdriver, and it makes you look like this Darby O’Gill giant trying to work in a tiny little world. “Must get screw out.”

With that, he made a big oaf face and pretended to be rolling a teeny-tiny screwdriver between his thumb and index finger, squinting at the miniscule thing it was unscrewing.

Bro: And it’s even worse with those things because you can’t hold the top like you want to because it turns. You have to hold that narrow, slotted thing around the middle, which is even more awkward, and you’re rolling it between your fingers instead of gripping it with your hand.

Me: Yeah, and the manufacturer made sure to put in 100 screws that are atomic sized, 100 that are molecular sized, and 100 that are barely visible with the naked eye. Why three sizes? And why are they in here so tight? It’s like Dad worked at this plant and convinced them that the tighter a screw is, the more sound the design.

Bro: They do, but over time they get corroded, so not only do you have to break that seal of the super-over-tightened screws the size of DNA, but you have to break the chemical corrosion that has sealed the screw to the plastic, too.

Me (breathing heavy): This is nuts! I can’t get these tiny screws out!

Bro: That’s why no one opens their keyboards!

Me: It’s a conspiracy! I won’t participate! I will fix my L!

Finally I got the keyboard open and all these little plastic suction-cup-looking things went flying everywhere.

Me: SON-OF-A—

He started laughing so hard he had to leave the room.

I spent the next 15 minutes trying to line up the plastic thingies with the keyboard keys and circuit board thingy to get it back together, and when I finally did, only the letters D and F worked.

Meltdown in 3…2…1…

Grabbing the keyboard and all the carefully placed plastic thingies, I slammed it on my desk with a scream and little miniature suction cups and screws went everywhere. It was the biggest miniature mess I ever saw and it made me laugh.

Me: So, wanna go to Walmart and get a new keyboard with me?

And so we went.

In a snowstorm.

But now my L works again. And I feel normal-sized once more.