Crazy makers. Some wise author, psychologist, or social worker coined the phrase. I can’t think of who it is, and I am too lazy and tired to google it at the moment. But I succumbed to a crazy maker today. My mother got up out of her bed for the first time in 3 weeks, and I was so overjoyed by it that I agreed right away to meet her at “Worst Buy” after work to help her get a computer. She has desperately needed a computer for about the last 8 years, the rotten thing she has being an ancient and crippled EMachine that somehow manages to limp along, when it doesn’t crash. The other thing she has is an HP so old as to be considered a dinosaur, and although I’ve wiped the harddrive 3 times, and installed various virus protection, it just can’t seem to get along properly. It’s too old to handle high speed.

The other huge issue of course is that mom is one of the few that still uses dial-up. She has no problem waiting 20 minutes to get on the damn internet, although patience is not something that I would list among her virtues, and neither would she, actually. SO. I was SO HAPPY that she was OUT OF BED, and wanted to GET A GOOD COMPUTER that I agreed to meet her after work. Sweet Donnie had already agreed to help out after all. I figured by the time I got to Worst Buy that they would be checking out, we might all have some dinner, and although I would miss my beloved nap, that I would at least make it in time to have pie and coffee with Wendy. Did this happen? OF COURSE NOT. You know it didn’t because I wouldn’t be blathering on about it if things had gone according to plan. So I arrive at the store, and find my sweet husband and my mother surround by not one or two, but three tech people, none of whom seem to understand how to even SELL this computer. You see, even though they had it in stock, they had not sold one of these before. It had a Verizon Air Card inside, where you pay monthly to have access to the internet. But they had never set this up. So after multiple phone calls to Verizon, all that could be discerned was that although the cell phone account had a “zero balance”, the effing computer at the store that links to Verizon INSISTED there was a balance. We left the store in total confusion, and out of hunger, and out of irritation, because only my father is authorized to discuss the Verizon account. We sent mom away, because she was starting to try to talk to the poor woman who was trying hardest to help her while the lady was on the phone. Even after we told her it was time to go, she continued to talk. We gently removed her by means of an elbow grip. The store people gave us looks that said they were sorry they were losing a potential sale, but they kind of hoped they wouldn’t see us back, at least until tomorrow, if ever. Donnie and I ate. And I got ahold of my father. And he agreed to come to the store. That, in itself, is AMAZING. It was approaching 9 when dad arrived, talked disgustedly with the Verizon people, who will NEVER EVER for any reason EVER tell you the same information. Each rep you talk to will tell you something slightly different. That’s so you get customized service. Like when you buy a crap artifact from a third world country and it tells you that slight defects are no big deal, that’s what makes it handcrafted and unique. This is not a good model for a corporate monopoly, in my opinion, if you actually WANT to make people happy. But if you just want to give them the bare minimum and make money through confusion, it’s good. It worked very well for AOL (AO-HELL) over the years, and I think they may have shared business practices with Verizon. I believe the psychology of it is that if you confuse the consumer enough, or frustrate them enough, they will eventually go away, or pay you more money to make you go away, or pay you money because they say you owe them money. In this particular instance, Verizon claimed that there was a “separate account” that a small balance was owed on, and THAT was the reason that this particular computer could not be sold with the Verizon card activated. This small balance, I happen to know personally, was paid MANY MOONS AGO, and was paid by yours truly, when I moved my business cell into an account in my name. I HAD to pay all the balance in order to do this. So, was money really owed? No. But corporate giants have creative accounting software. At this point, I paid this apparent past due balance on this old ass account that had my old phone and my mom’s old phone on it, and FINALLY we were able to buy mom a computer. We completed our transaction 30 seconds before the store shut down for the night. The moral of the story is: A crazy maker is always a crazy maker. If you decide to get involved, plan on forfeiting any plans you might have had and prepare to adapt to the new agenda. Corporate giants are crazy makers. They just do it on a different scale. The total effect is that when one crazy maker’s magnetic field collides with another crazy maker’s field, they twist, mate, and you don’t know what you will get. In this case, the quantum mechanics of it produced a favorable result. In some parallel universe, we are still in that store, and will never leave it, and will never have solved the problem, being trapped in the crazy maker field.

I’m so grateful my consciousness resides in THIS particular universe. And although my mom is a crazy maker, I love her anyway. She’s my mom. The only one I’ve got, and the only one that can annoy the Worst Buy people more than they annoy anyone else. It was probably their karma. I did wind up thanking the gentleman in the end, and I believe Verizon will probably reimburse the “past due fee” that was “owed.”

Since Sweet Donnie has given me a laptop, I expect I will be blogging a lot more than I have been. You poor creatures. Months of silence….and now it is monsoon season.