Last night a friend of mine from church told me she had a computer glitch and couldn’t get into her email. The computer is now in the shop. It reminded me of my own computer nightmare a few months ago.

I have a November 1 deadline, right? It is the first week of October and my laptop screen goes dark while I’m working. I try everything to fix it, nothing works. I take it into the place where I had purchased it, explain the problem. They tell me they have to send it back to the manufacturer. Okie-dokie. I have a spare laptop at home. My work in progress has been saved on my “key.” The company backs up everything too just in case I’ve missed something—of course, they charge me $89.00 to do so, but better safe than sorry.

I start working on the backup laptop. It works a few days, then it has some kind of short circuit, so that no matter what I do, it will only run on battery and I can’t recharge it. All righty then.

By now we’re well into the second week of October, and I’m getting nervous. I call to check on my first computer to see if it’s come back from the factory (since they knew it was a rush), and they tell me it hasn’t even been sent in yet!

Huston, we have a problem.

I take laptop number two into another repair place to get it fixed. In the meantime, I work on my desktop computer at home that is old and has its own set of problems.

Finally, laptop number one is shipped back to me. I open it, try it out, the screen starts up, all systems go—then it darks out—again. Okay, now I want to hurt somebody.

I take it back to the store and by now I know these guys so well, I could invite them to Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve been pleasant up to now, and still want to be, but how can I get across to them how desperate I am for a decent machine? Oh, did I mention this laptop that’s in for repair is less than a year old?

I go up to the young man, explain the situation, and he says he has to ship it back to the manufacturer yet again. I’m hoping they’ll give me a backup unit, but nothing doing. I finally lean into the counter and say through clenched teeth, “Look, could you tell the powers that be that I am a writer and I am on a deadline. I’m feeling a little crazy right now, and I’m thinking I could go postal.” The kid looks frightened for just a moment until he sees me laugh, but I see the teensiest bit of doubt in his eyes, and I’m okay with that.

Long story short, I finally get my computer back and it is fixed. I make deadline—barely, but I have the gray hairs to prove it.

Moral to this story? Buy three backup units. It just might keep you out of prison.