I bet you don't have play dough in your keyboard.

I had the most interesting conversation with a computer tech lady on the phone last night.  I called because for three days our notebook only had a white screen, nothing else.  Of course though when finally made the call to costumer support the computer came on, apparently just needing some time to rest and the threat of a call.  I continued the call anyways though because the computer was still not working properly.  When  I finally got through to someone, she started to ask me all of the normal technical questions that most support teams ask such as, "what is the issue" and "did you try this or that?"  Finally, she tried to walk me through a few fixes that I could perform to see if that helped my computer.  "Ma'am, could you please hit ctl-alt-del?"  I started laughing as I said, "Nope, can't do that one."  "Excuse me," she said.  "My delete button doesn't work, as well as that hold side of the computer like the number pad, and such."  "Oh, okay" she said.  "Well, can you hit the window button and esc at the same time?"  "Nope, can't do that one either," I said.  I have play dough in my escape key and I can't press that, and my son took off the windows button, so no luck there either."  "Ma'am, not to sound rude, but maybe I should ask you what does work" she stated while laughing.  "Yeah, that would probably be easier!"  I replied giggling back.  And so I explained to her that I can hit any letter key, the numbers above the letter and some function buttons and that's all. "I have quite an active son that can be rough with the computer," I said matter of factly. I didn't want to go into the details of why my son was active and so rough with my computer.  Of how he didn't think the Windows flag button should be on the computer since it wasn't a letter or number and removed it thinking he was being my big boy helper.  How the play dough was smashed into the keyboard to make his own keyboard imprint.  And how the latest incident occurred when he couldn't bring up a video of trains he wanted so he threw it across the room.  "I'd guess your son is rough on it since you computer is only a year old.  My goodness" she said.  After some more laughs, we decided that maybe my computer should just be sent in to have it looked at since I purchased the all-inclusive warranty when I bought it knowing my aspie's love of technology then...and his meltdowns. 

After my phone conversation, my husband and I had started taking about all the techno things that live a rough life in our house, given the fact that our son loves and obsesses about that kind of stuff.  My 4 year old has the hardest time writing, drawing, and even HATES coloring but working the tablet is not a problem.  In fact, I had to change the password on our Kindle twice since he cracked it once and bought himself $60.00 worth of Charlie Brown videos.  (And in case you are ever looking for an episode, please contact me.  We literally own every one now thanks to our aspie's little spending spree.)  He can work the notebook and my smart phone.  And yes, he knows the in and outs of the child locks and blocks on those as well which I have to change often.  And when he can't get on something, or his time is up on a certain device, a meltdown happens that usually entails the throwing or hiding of the device.  Of course we work constantly on this, and it is happening less and less now, but it still does happen.  And as my husband and I were talking about this,  I was reminded of another blogger who was writing about his son, who also had autism, and who threw a remote against his 72' TV smashing the screen, being the most expensive thing to date his son broke/smashed.  People started replying to his post with other things their kids smashed, which included things like blenders, windshields, computers, dvds, video games consoles, etc.  I kept thinking, yup, I can see my aspie doing that.  Not that I want him to, but knowing that meltdowns can come in a blink of the eye, I can see it happening.  And so, after I was telling my husband of the TV incident this other family had to endure we decided that okay, so our computer has play dough and missing keys, but it at least it wasn't a 72" flat screen TV.  And if some day it is a TV, well then I guess we will cross that bridge then, and I am sure I will be blogging about it with a large pitcher of margaritas at my side!