Tech Support by Annika Speer

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

shift⌘? (help)

“Where’s the Bluetooth on my laptop?” “Can you edit a PDF?” “Why won’t the picture attach to email?” 
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My elderly mother’s phone calls, typically conducted during the middle of my workday, frequently begin with low-grade tech support. Not exactly running the “Genius Bar” myself, these interactions usually necessitate that I Google her question and parrot the information back to her. 

 ⌘H (hide)

Sometimes I don’t answer. Busy, cranky, or a combination of the two. If picking up the phone will cause an argument, it’s better for our relationship that voicemail runs interception. 

We both have sharp edges. 

 ⌘N (open new)

My new year commenced with a missed call. Clearly a pocket dial while driving, the opening half of her inadvertent voicemail is muffled gray road noise. The clicking of the turn indicator. The squeaking of window wipers. A cough. Then, believing herself alone, she begins to softly sing “Auld Lang Syne.” Mid warble on the lyric about drinking “a cup o’ kindness,” someone seemingly cuts her off. Laying on the horn, she spills that cup o’ kindness, splashing obscenities across the dashboard. 

Huffy muttering. 
Pause. 
She resumes singing, taking it from the top. 

 ⌘G (find again)

I’ve listened to that message repeatedly. Gentle off-key positivity disrupted by a piercing reactive outburst followed by the swift recovery back to song – a perfect encapsulation of her essence through the technological blundering of accidental audio. 

⌘S (save)

One day, in the not-so-distant future, I’ll miss being her tech support. 

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Annika Speer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production at University of California Riverside. Her academic writing has been published in journals specializing in communication, theatre, gender & sexuality, and pedagogy. Her creative nonfiction has been published in a variety of literary journals as well as nominated for “Best of the Net” and the Pushcart Prize.