Sunday, January 6, 2013

A Shiny New Computer

One day I got up to find that my computer refused to turn on. It wouldn't charge. It adamantly insisted that I was being mean and it couldn't possibly be expected to work. At first I thought, "It's just the charger cord or something. I'll show it Dad and he'll fix it in five minutes."

So I picked up my little laptop and toddled off to find Dad. He took it and plugged the charger in. As I expected, nothing at all happened. He unplugged it and tried again. We tried another charger and got the same result. 

"I'll take it to be repaired," Dad said. "You can use my laptop while it's being fixed."

Dad took charge of my laptop, I started borrowing whatever computer was on offer and things went on as normal. A few days ago when Dad had some spare time he start ringing up about getting my computer fixed. He rang everywhere, even India, to work out what had happened to it. Then he came to my bedroom.

"I've rung them about the computer and they think the motherboard has crashed."

"That's like a computer heart attack isn't it?"

So that was final. My computer wasn't coming back...so would I continue to beg and borrow computers? Nope.

"We'll get you a new computer soon," Dad promised. 

I thought that it might be a few weeks before we'd do anything. But just a couple days ago things happened. 

The doorbell rang. I dropped the cheese slicer on the board, abandoned the sandwiches and ran to let Mum and Dad in. For a few minutes everything was forgotten as we unpacked the shopping. But once things had calmed down and I was eating my lunch, Mum called. I hurried to her bedroom. 

"Would you like this laptop?"

A large shiny brand-new laptop sat on her bed. It was black and silver and very shiny. My eyes widened.

"Yes please!"

I couldn't believe it. A new laptop! One that went at the speed of light, didn't die in the heat and wouldn't toast my feet as I wrote. 

In the afternoon Dad began setting it up. I stood behind him, eyes glued to the screen as he installed basic programs and got rid of random things it had come with. I couldn't believe the speed. It didn't go in fits and starts and moan the whole time. No, my new laptop took everything in its stride. Then came the most important part, the background. We hunted through the stock backgrounds it came with.

"There's these tulips or these other flowers," Dad said as we scrolled through.

"Can we try the koala?"

Dad clicked on the image and my screen filled with a massive fuzzy koala. 

"I love it."

"Are you sure that's what you want? We could look for something else."

But I was sure. 

By evening I had a brilliant laptop, ready to do anything. I could write novels and blog posts and play computer games, even on hot days. And it was mine. Thanks to my wonderful parents I now have one of the best computers in the whole house. 

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