She had always had an unblemished record of efficiency but over the years, age had taken its toll. She no longer inspired confidence and looked worn out, even imbalanced, as though one shoulder was higher than the other. Worse still, there was a distinct asthmatic wheeze which escalated into a rattling cough, when performing the smallest task. It was all very distressing but everyone glossed over it, not wanting the question to be raised, as to why at all she was still around.
But sooner or later all hell was bound to break loose. The irritant became a full-blown crisis one day, when she seemed to have had a complete breakdown. What was appalling was that she had even forgotten all the instructions given! ‘A classic case of short term memory loss’ I joked to the spouse as his brows drew close in a familiar frown. The line, which normally never failed to evoke a smile, fell completely flat and he left the room muttering something about not putting up with the situation any longer. I thought this was it—finally. My mind went back over the last several years of our association. The children had been so delighted when she first joined the household. How had the deterioration taken place to this extent that we were now forced to move on?
I decided to try and reach out to her one last time. With infinite patience, though that has never been my forte, I tried to coax some response. My efforts seemed to be stonewalled initially, but I persisted, my confidence growing by infinitesimal bits. There was one faint positive reaction and then the final breakthrough. The problem was nothing more than slight fatigue in coping with additional physical burden, and some amount of memory slippage. I announced triumphantly to the spouse that the secret was to be patient and not start banging your fist on the table, upsetting the fragile balance even more.
That was the only understanding the old lady had craved, but we were too impatient and busy to read the signals correctly. However, empathy had won the day and declared me the winner. It was a Eureka like discovery in terms of diagnosis and treatment, and ridiculous in its sheer simplicity—keep only one sheet of paper in the paper tray and give a command to print only one page at a time. Armed with this sure-shot formula for victory, I printed out the 60 pages of my daughter’s assignment, well in time. The pages came out crisp and without a crease, with every line in sharp focus—a very smart looking document in all.
And thus will our grand old lady, the HP DeskJet printer live on, to teach many an impatient younger generation about being intuitive rather than only analytical—and more importantly, that the old are more than worth their weight in gold.
