He Woudda Understood

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Dr. Lee Phelps, 2007.

Lee would have completely understood.

Knowing that we were going to a gathering of the Feasters this evening, of which Lee was a member, I thought I’d take a photo of Lee along as a little gift and memory.

Lee was not a computer literate friend. He had a laptop thanks to the J2’s, but it confused him. He, the usually flexible PhD, had no flexibility when it came to the electronics of the 21st century. Each time someone would send him email, someone else would have to call him and tell him how to access his computer plus his email.

That’s how I felt when I was trying to print the picture of Lee.

After Photoshopping the original picture, I waited till the Geezer came home from work. How did I know that Windows 7 would add complications to the already ornate process of printing a photograph, but I must have known. The Geezer, revitalized from a talk with his boss….”How do I know how I am doing if you don’t tell me,” sort of talk, was able to ignore my struggles until asked to help.

Windows 7 doesn’t make it easy to print a photograph. I shan’t tell you how many prints I produced that chopped the head off the Geezer, Lee, and one of the J2’s. Whack. I’ll take one of those along to spur laughter. There was even one that chopped Lee off at the neck. Zip. There he was.

Help, I said, and G stood up to supervise. I thought all the problems were solved, but no. He too was lost in Microsoft confusions. A does not equal A in that world of bytes and gigabytes. After great struggles, we got Lee’s head to print. Completely. Only after almost giving up the ghost did we switch to printing from Photoshop, and old copy of Elements, that gave us a small but adequate print of the three eaters smiling into the lens.

We felt as if we had climbed Mount Everest.

He would have understood completely.