Relax My Grip

Down to the Apple Store.  I had a pang of anxiety heading over.  Originally, I'd been content with a two-of-a-kind-hand, sort of calm.  I was going to have them look at my laptop.  If there was anything wrong, (and I was relatively certain my battery had drained now to irrelevance) I was still under warranty.  I’d be fine.  What could they say?  This is what I bought Apple Care for, every time.

Left a friend’s house and settling into the back seat of a Didi, my mind found itself presented with a poker straight.  You haven’t made a Genius Bar appointment.  It doesn’t matter if you’re under warranty.  They aren’t going to have any openings for you. 

I decide to play the hand I have regardless and trot up Steve’s clear glass steps and find me a young person in a green shirt.  (I think they used to be red. Now they’re all green.) With one and then another young person I insist on speaking Chinese.  I could speak English here but I don’t want to somehow.  I may be a bit elliptical explaining the software crash, but I’ve navigated harder things. 

I notice how assertive I am as I try to explain the problem to one perfectly reasonable young gentleman and try, in real time to shift gears and relax my grip.  I smile.  I start to adjust my cadence to something slower.  Something more like his pacing.  No perceptible change in him but I’m cognizant of all the times I’ve heard a Chinese or any foreigner speak English in an agitated fashion.  It always sounds funny.  I don’t want to sound funny. 

They tell me they’ll text me in an hour, when the specialist is ready.  Seems reasonable.  Downstairs I look over the iPhone X’s. They look cool.  And I “need” one in as much as my iPhone 6 is hopelessly gummed up now with planned obsolescence shortcomings.  Wisely, I think, I manage to leave the phones there, without buying one.  Soon.  But not today. 

Sunday, 5/06/18