State of the art.... When I bought it.

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Finally. I’ve learned better than to yell or curse out loud. The first few times people understand, the next dozen you get looks, after a few hundred you are an outcast, and the thousandth, well, at that point you’ve moved past the place of caring that people think you have leprosy.

Only cursing the gods a few thousand times is praiseworthy, considering how many password tries it has taken to crack this ancient tomb described to me as: “state-of-the art… when they bought it.”

Since the summer of my sophomore year, I’ve spent my free time trying to crack this case across campus. A 7 pound 17 inch brick of Luddite technology is my ever present shadow, companion, and weekend date. The looks we get…People don’t understand our love. We received too many stares at the coffee shop and student union. The lawn? Not without an extension cord to feed my power hungry beast. Instead, we spent the better part of my colligate years in the library, where I’m free to explore this tomb cracking in peace. 

“Shoot….” 

“Shhh….”

That was probably a little loud. I could apologize, but committing the cardinal sin twice during finals week would only make things worse. Plus, I’m a senior, so who cares? 

Why am I spending my time cracking a safe? Why am I not studying or partying? Because life doesn’t happen as a montage. Significant achievements are built and don’t materialize magically. Life is a series of small steps, not large leaps. This laptop is my white whale. Cracking it is the last thing I need to leave campus satisfied. 

“Shoot,” I say, softer this time as I stare at the desktop. 

The background is a rat’s nest of folders. There are at least four hundred on the seventeen inch screen, on top of one another. I could have the computer try to arrange them, but that would probably send it to the great hard drive in the sky. Soaring, tumbling and freewheeling folders dive on top of each other as a piranha pit dying for your attention. A siren song hoping to lure me in and then gobble up what little undergraduate time I have left. 

I click through a few folders. This was my grandmother’s last piece of technology that every single email, picture, video, document, and file was stored. God bless her soul, but my family failed her. No one showed her how to group things, or how to name the folders. 

Folder names are the rantings of a toddler: “99 teh” Or “0009d_d” or my personal favorite “gunk.” The folders are a fool’s errand, but I’m drawn into the mystery of my grandmother’s mind. How and why did she come up with the names? Is there order in the chaos? Are they random? Or did she just not know how to type? In my life, where have I spent hours creating or curating rat’s nest of information and data that I’m saving for later? The sad truth is, things take more time than we would like, and we probably spend too much of it watching, cleaning, or curating things we hope to use later. 

 After spending three hours clicking through folders, I change my approach. I know what I’m looking for. The file names are more nonsensical than the folders. The search function is broken, but I know what I’m looking for. With that in mind, the only way forward is going through each file a click at a time. It may not be for everyone, but since I was eight, I grinded on MMO’s. During the past four years, I toiled as a lab assistant spending hours watching screens and baby-sitting experiments. I’ve trained for this and understand monotony is a part of existence. 

There aren’t shortcuts for this search. After spending two and a half years cracking the code, I will not get impatient now. Despite what you see on T.v. life takes time. Athletes spend years in the gym to sculpt that perfect body. Chefs prep for hours to craft a transcendent meal. Even those shows and movies you love take more time to create than you can fathom. Monotony is a facet of life. Everything worth doing involves it and I’ve accepted that reality. Instead of getting down, I start a new audio book and keep clicking. Searching for my pot of gold. 

“So Silus, how does it feel?”

“How does what feel, Uncle Bob?”

“To be a graduate. Come now, I know you’re going to graduate school, but this first step must feel rewarding. It must feel good. Silus Seymour, college graduate.”

It doesn’t feel different. That may be because sleep deprivation and carpel tunnel are impacting my senses, however life doesn’t work like that. While we can feel relief, pride, joy, anger or any other emotion in a single moment, genuine appreciation for the good things happens in reflection. There is a certain euphoria followed closely by a crash when you achieve something, but that grand idea that you wake up a different person is a fallacy. It is all a series of small steps; it isn’t a montage. I’ve been told everything changes when you become a parent, but I’m 22 and have no way to verify that. 

“It feels amazing.” I politely lie. “Although I think I’m going to go get another plate, if that’s okay.”

“Go… Go,” My uncle shoos me away. “And enjoy that metabolism while it lasts. When it turns on you, things get ugly.”

“hugh…hugh..” I nod, laugh, and force an awkward smile as my uncle rubs his beer belly like an unborn child. I hope I don’t get weird when I get old. 

“Silus, getting another plate?” My aunt greets me. “I mean, you’re skinny, but I don’t think you have left the kitchen once.”

I’m not hungry. Right now my blood is probably 65% cappuccino but I’ve hung around the kitchen, missing most of my party, waiting for this. 

“You know I can’t get enough of these biscuits,” I interrupt to start the omnipresent civil war between my mother and her sister. 

“It’s because of the margarine,” my moms says, forgetting about the need to defend her baby’s eating habits. 

“Sis, mom didn’t do half butter and half margarine. She did double butter.”

This play is a staple of family events. The chorus of my childhood. It’s the reason there are two plates of equally inedible biscuits at every meal and why we have to act like we enjoy them. A family recipe, lost to time and the grave, is always threatening to tear our family apart. 

“Actually, I found it.”

“What Silus?” My aunt breaks from her second act monologue to address me. 

“Mom gave me Grandma’s old computer, I cracked the password, and found the recipe. Here it is.”

Maybe I was wrong, and a single moment can change everything. Maybe you don’t need time to appreciate everything. Because I feel different now. Satisfied, lighter, accomplished, and free. I may be levitating. I know I have a glow and have never seen them mute. Since my grandmother died the kitchen has been a war zone, not a peaceful respite. They grab the phone in disbelief and I know spending my college years seven pounds heavier was all worth it to say this. 

“She didn’t change the butter. It’s the recipe on the box with a pinch of cinnamon.”