Rabbit Hole

It’s too easy to go down the rabbit holes in my mind these days.  My imagination leaps about like an….an…undisciplined terrier.  Which can be a good thing (can delight children; can help me put myself in others’ shoes to accomplish small talk; fodder for creative pursuits) –

or, a bad thing.

Example from this morning: I had to set up a new monitor at work.  A large, awesome new fancypants monitor that I love.  Anyhow, these days, hardware is no longer just a matter of plugging in a couple of things.  There are quite a few cables, accessories and shprockets.  So I did indeed consult the Product Information Guide to make sure I had addressed all of the important things.  The Guide is a thin sheet folded about 9 times, written in 3 pt font.  I squinted at that mofo trying to find a reference to the driver files on that came on CD – do I need to install them or not? – when I came across a large notice (large in this context being roughly 6 pt font) saying that there is a certain icon in the instructions that will alert the consumer to “a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death.”

And off we go…I started trying to think of the various scenarios in which my gorgeous new monitor, or the process of setting it up, could kill me.  There’s the more common and banal – for example, it overheats and starts a fire.  It has crazy frayed cables that give me an electric shock.

But then I challenge my mind to think of more imaginative scenarios:

• Ok, I am setting it up and I drop the monitor on my exposed pinky toe.  This causes an abrasion which gets infected with some rare staph infection and I die.
• An intruder comes into the office looking to steal the nicest and newest equipment on the floor.  S/he spots my beautiful monitor and begins to mentally calculate the resale value.  I have already become too attached to the monitor to let it go without a fight.  The intruder tases me, then hits me over the head with the monitor, one fatal blow.
• A poisonous lizard has become a stowaway in the monitor box.  It leaps at me and latches onto my neck, releasing its crazy jungle toxins into my bloodstream.
• It turns out that this monitor had been used once before by a peanut butter sandwich fiend.  They didn’t like it and returned it and it looked so new the company fiendishly decided to sell it as brand new.  Too bad you can’t see peanut molecules CROUCHING ON THE SURFACE of the monitor, waiting to make me rashy and puffy.  I should not have patted and caressed the monitor with such glee, for it is a deadly histamine weapon.

Before you know it, I am staring into space, running down the rabbit hole, instead of demonstrating how much more productive you can be with a larger monitor screen.