My MacGyver Moment

I told myself this morning that I would be working by 9 AM. It didn’t happen. Here’s why:

By 8:45, things were ahead of schedule. I had finished my breakfast (a reduced fat turkey bacon and egg sandwich from Starbs), chugged my Ensure (yummy chocolate), read my comic (The Unwritten #1), and swallowed my pills (hooray for fish oil). All that was left to do was to plug in my (depleted of battery power) laptop and get to writing.

I connected the cord, opened the screen, pressed the power button and waited. I repeated the process and the result was the same. No power, no juice, no nothing.

For most people, trouble-shooting a computer plug problem is a complete no-brainer, a ten second inconvenience at most. For me, though, an issue like this can easily turn into an all-day affair. Seeing as how I am currently endowed with the strength of a 98-pound weakling and the speed of a 1968 VW Microbus travelling uphill through a patch of wet cement, the likelihood of a quick and easy fix wasn’t looking so good.

In my mind, there were three potential options for solving my little problem. One, I could do nothing and wait for someone to walk into my room. I decided against this option for several reasons: I had no idea if and/or when anybody would stop by and if they did, how the hell would I be able to ask them for help (my ALS accent is rather thick these days). And besides, I had no more comics to read, so, no on that one. Two, I could call for help. But since I am verbally, I mean, gruntally, unable to differentiate between a moan for ‘fix my computer’ help and ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ help, I decided that the last thing I needed to do was to cry wolf and get everyone in a panic. Been there, done that, AND bought the shirt. No thank you. My third option was to fix the problem myself. Wisely, I went with that one.

Assuming my lack of power issue most likely started and ended either in, on, or around the long white junction box on the floor to the right of my desk, I pressed the power button on my boom-box to the on position so that in the event my theory was correct, I would be able to hear the power being restored instead of having to walk all the way back to my laptop to verify that fact. It was a brilliant notion, if I do say so myself.

Next, I (literally) inched my way around my desk towards the power strip, maneuvering my not-so-flexible body onto the seat of my wheelchair. Spinning my chair around 180 degrees, I was able to visually confirm exactly what I had suspected all along: The red button on the white power box was switched off.

I bent down to flip it on but my fingers were a good six inches short of the mark. Not being the kind of person to give up at the first sign of adversity, I quickly scanned the room for some type of assistive device, like a ruler, to help me reach that oh-so-close-yet-so-far-away tiny red button. My first look-see yielded me absolutely nothing useful. I decided to go mobile with my search, canvassing every nook and cranny of my shared office from the safety and comfort of my electric wheelchair.

I happened upon a box of thick felt-tipped markers that were sitting on a shelf up against the far wall. With exacting precision and an inordinate amount of effort, I painstakingly connected four pens, cap to base, creating a sort-of Super Pen, whose only function in the world was to bridge the gap between my fingers and that damn red button. 

Armed with my blue-blue-red-purple pen, I rolled back to the white junction box ready to do battle.

Did it work?

You’re reading this, aren’t you?

Advertisement