A few days before Fathers Day my wife asked me if I wanted to see a picture of the gift she had purchased for me. Knowing my wife for as long as I have I quickly deduced that I didn’t like where this conversation was headed so I did what any smart husband does when asked a question by his wife that he doesn’t really want to answer….I remained silent.

She continued and preceded to tell me that the gift she had ordered wouldn’t be arriving until October. Now not only was I silent but I’m sure my face looked quizzical as I thought to myself that the gift sounded more like something to be given at Christmas and not Fathers Day. But I always like to remain gracious when presented with a gift so I attempted to retain a positive look on my face.

I’m sure that look changed when I saw the gift. It was neither something I needed, wanted or would have purchased for myself and I found the item to be wildly overpriced. Now we can debate whether most things are overpriced in today’s economy and why that is but I have neither the time nor energy for that.

I remained silent for what seemed an interminable amount of time as I quickly studied my options. My silence and lack of enthusiasm was the real answer and my wife noticed.

We seemed to have reached the age where buying gifts for each other has become difficult. We rarely exchange gifts anymore as most of the gifts are unnecessary and just add to the clutter that I now constantly contemplate but rarely do anything about.

When my wife expressed the very idea that she didn’t know what to get me I suddenly realized what I really wanted. For a couple of months now I have been unable to write on this very website. That’s not entirely true as I have only been unable to write using the laptop. I have been able to login and write using my phone which is frustrating on many levels. I like to sit at a desk with a computer screen and keyboard and tap away occasionally glancing up to notice all the misspelled words and punctuation errors. A phone is not something to write blog posts on, at least not for me.

A phone is for texting, doom scrolling, accessing the entire world, getting directions to the new restaurant, booking flights, playing games, listening to music, taking pictures, sending and receiving emails, scheduling your calendar, writing notes and remainders to yourself, listening to podcasts, keeping a huge lists of contacts most of whom you never actually contact, making videos, keeping track of your workouts so you can annoy your friends with your Strava data, sending GIPHS ( which lets be real nobody still can agree how to pronounce…is it Jiffs or Giffs?) and even perhaps making a phone call.

Somehow the login for this website changed….don’t ask me how these things happen or how they always seem to happen to me but I could only login on my phone. I tried, oh did I try numerous times to login and write. I had emails sent to me with login procedures and new temporary passwords but each time left me on the verge of destroying something, probably the laptop itself, and since I knew that wasn’t a good idea although it might be satisfying, I was reduced to writing on my phone which since I find annoying I was sure it had also simultaneously curbed my creativity.

So when my wife asked me what could she have possibly gotten me for Fathers Day I actually had an answer. As I mentioned earlier there are few gifts I need or want. I have numerous polo shirts, too many books, gadgets I don’t use, memorabilia and mementos that sit around getting dusty, t-shirts I still wear from 20 years ago and golf clubs that are one step away from being taken to the curb on garbage day. What I really appreciate now that I’ve grown older is time spent with others and somebody doing something for me that I either can’t do or find frustrating to do, and believe me anything to do with a QR code or password is at the top of my list of frustrating things.

But since my wife is an IT professional I figured it was the perfect time to have her fix my login problem and get back to writing. And if you’re wondering why I didn’t ask her sooner, I admit I was stubborn and didn’t want to ask for help with a tech issue and I know that she deals with IT issues all day which her usual response to is “it sounds like user error”…..of course she’s not wrong about this. And since I know when she comes home from a long day of programming, helping others with their passwords and proclaiming “it’s probably user error” well the last thing I wanted to bother her with was a password login problem.

A few clicks on the computer and a few clicks on my phone and the problem that had thwarted me for months was solved in less than 5 minutes. She then proceeded to cancel the other gift, the Fathers Day gift not scheduled to arrive until October (seriously what was she thinking) and I know sit happy at a desk typing away and misspelling every other word. Now if only I could figure out how to get the text the right size.

Enjoy time with others and have smart people around to fix your passwords

John