Life is strange at times…maybe you can explain it to me.

Recently I visited my Podiatrist. She has helped me enormously with my problematic feet. Since I was a little girl my feet have caused me problems off and on. I have narrow feet and they are scrawny (inherited) and I have fallen arches. Not a good foundation on which to base the life of a biped. Fortunately I gravitated toward sturdy shoes most of the time, though I had my share of ankle breakers and platforms. Anyway, my recent visit was a follow up from treatment she gave me nearly four years ago, all of which was very helpful and sound. But a new thing has popped up, quite literally—-bone spurs. Bone deposits on the tops of my big toe joints now need addressing before they become a serious problem. Chelsea ordered x-rays so that she could then refer me to an orthopaedic surgeon in Adelaide. But that is another story.

The very next day I fronted up to the hospital imaging department, expecting a long wait to have the x-rays done. I was in and out in less than half an hour. Given how stretched our medical system is at the moment, I was shocked. (Though I suspect moving some of the drunks out of town and reducing sales hours for alcohol has eased the problem somewhat—fewer faces and bones being broken with the imposed sobriety) Feeling I should make the most of the ‘bonus’ time with the car before turning it over to Don for his weekly errands, I detoured to the appliance store where I had bought my two and a half year old computer printer. It had stopped working the previous week. After chasing around a couple of repair places and getting nowhere I hoped the store could give me an idea of what to do. The salesman was very nice but he had a heavy Indian accent so I had to ask him to repeat things a couple of times. After giving him all the purchase information he looked up at me and said ‘All you need to do is bring the old printer in, along with the power cord, and we will give you a new printer’. Thinking I had misheard him I asked him to repeat what he had said. He then informed me I had purchased an extra ‘Product Care’ service when I bought the printer. It was the beginning of the Pandemic, and rightly so as it turns out, I was feeling a bit bleak about the future. This entitled me to a replacement if there was something wrong with the printer within two years after the initial one year warranty elapsed.

Never in my life have I benefitted from one of these extended warranties. I went straight home and loaded the deceased printer into the car and drove straight back, expecting him to sheepishly tell me he had made a mistake and they would repair the unit, not replace it. Either way I was happy, I just wanted something that worked since I rely heavily on photographic references for painting. But when I got there with the unit and he finished filling out the return request, he said ‘it will be a day or two but they will send you a credit and you can come in and get your new printer’!!! I said I just want something equivalent to the one I was returning and he said ‘we have those in stock’! I told him he had made my day and he laughed.

The rest of the story…

At this stage I needed to go pick up Don so he could drop me at home and have the car until that afternoon when he played golf. He slipped into the driver’s seat and on the way home I was explaining what had happened with the x-ray going so quickly and then the printer being replaced. Because you can’t stop the hands of person with Italian heritage from gesticulating when they talk–I explained with my extended index fingers like magic wands along the dashboard and radio in the car, and laughingly said ‘Maybe I should just put out my fingers when I get home and tap ‘ding’ ‘ding’ ‘ding’ on everything that needs fixing and it will be done!’ Literally within seconds, the radio came on without either of us touching it! The station had been off the air from when I got into the car early in the morning, and I hadn’t bothered to turn it off. We both had a huge laugh but side-eyed each other at the serendipity of it. Was singing the tune from Twilight Zone too much? Probably. But it did cross my mind.

Now he calls me ‘magic fingers’. Everyone knows you only get ‘three’ of things, so the magic was gone…until next time.

Later….

The printer was indeed replaced with the latest model of the one that had stopped working and I even have it operational again.

Ding.