What Lies Beneath

No, I am neither referring to the movie nor narrating the commonly known topic of inner beauty versus outer beauty. Fortunately the story will unravel as I begin.

The alarm rang much earlier but I crawled out of bed only by 8am which is premature for me. I wanted to escape from the leaky ceiling which had occurred just a few days before – and that is a story in itself. After finding a pleasing spot by the window at by husband’s school, I unpacked my laptop only to find the cords missing. My husband had packed them in his bag yesterday and my five year old computer was not going to power on without it.

Suddenly I had three hours to exhaust and an idea dawned on me. Why not give this ancient computer a cleaning! Slowly I lifted off the keys, one section at a time. There were frequent trips to the coffee water heater next door. Drenched white entertainment napkins served as wet wipes.

What lay beneath was revealing. I could see rainbow colored fuzzies wrapped under the longer “Backspace,” “Enter,” and “Caps Lock” keys. And then there were the extra fine, short hairs scattered everywhere. I knew they couldn’t be mine but they looked suspiciously familiar. Aha! I thought. It had to be the deserted locks of the only man I knew in close proximity.

My continued investigation found further discovery. One eyeball looking yellow spot near the “4” drew my attention and I saw some dingy yellow, paint-like coloring towards the “H,” undeniably both symptoms of the soupy masala maggi noodles, a favorite evening meal a few years ago. The last few extraordinary findings soon brought my project to a close.

Placing the keys back took more time and more care than I had imagined. Returning the keys to their original positions would have been difficult, and my memory would have failed me, had I not cleverly created a false keyboard with the separate keys on the table beside me. Unfortunately there were a few casualties. The black connector behind the “5(%)” key got damaged, the long space bar needed juggling, and then I broke in two the helpless “Y” which left the keyboard with a toothless, black grin.

Had I a needle, some Q-tips, and a packet of alcohol swabs, I knew I could have done a better job but I am glad I shamelessly peeked. Will you?