No Charge
It started with a mobile phone, then another. There may have been an iPod at some point; it’s probably languishing in a drawer somewhere. Then came an iPad, and another, and more phones, tablets and laptops. All of them requiring to be charged, and not just when unused. Sometimes our need for screentime is so strong that we must charge the device while we use it.
As a result of this technological fecundity the house is strewn with charger cables. However, these are not static. They move and migrate and congregate. Somehow, they are never where you think they are when you need them. Of course, they are not animate — they move because we move them. Well, I say “we” but I mean “they”. I am rigorous in leaving them where they were, evenly distributed around the house for everyone.
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Unfortunately, my wife and children are not so fastidious. And it drives me mad. My wife attempts to soothe me, counselling patience and tolerance. “It’s not such a big deal”, she says. “Just go and find a charger”, she says. But this will only perpetuate the problem, displacing them further and paying forward the very irritation I have experienced. Can’t she see? Someone has to stop the rot!
For at root this is a moral issue. It is not even the appropriation of the cable of another which is the problem, it is the failure to return it afterwards. What has been borrowed must be returned, what is owed must be paid. What feckless, thoughtless people are our children going to become if they don’t understand this?
Finally, while browsing around IKEA, my wife buys enough charging cables for all of us. I am touched and relieved. Not only has she sought a practical solution to our problems, but she has recognised its importance to me and the emotional damage it is inflicting upon me. She is an angel.
Calm descends. I take to charging things even when I don’t really have to do, such is the abundance of opportunity to do so. And when I need to, there is a charger just where I need it.
Then, one day, there isn’t. I stomp around the house till I find it. Apparently two devices needed to be charged in the same place. I restore order. Until it happens again — one of the cables appears to be faulty. Desperately I resist the return of chaos, but the task is too great. We return to anarchy, and I am a broken man.
