True Story

The old lady waddled into my office. “Hi,” she greeted me. “Do you know anything about audio/visual connections?” She started fidgeting with her hands nervously, like a child asking their parents if they can have a sleepover. I wondered if she was nervous about the equipment she was trying to set up or if she was like me—afraid to ask people questions.

I’m also afraid when people ask me for help. I really do want to help them, but even when I try my hardest, sometimes I still let them down. I really just wanted to tell her, “Nope, sorry. I’ve never heard of audio/visual connections and I definitely don’t know anything about projectors, computers, VCRs, or DVD players either.” But this lady seemed nice, and curses, she did look really scared about something, so I decided to be kind and take the risk of looking like a fool. “I know a bit. Do you need help with something?”

“Well, we’re having a class...” She didn’t bother to finish her sentence. Instead, she stared at me like a lost puppy, or at least like a lost old woman.

“Okay, where is it?” I prod as I stand up, encouraging her to lead the way while I cringe inside. A class? I’m going to make a fool of myself in a class? How many people are going to watch me try to figure something out that I’ve never seen before? Crap crap crap crap crap!

“It’s just down here,” she replied as she guided me down the hallway. “We’re in the room with the people waving their arms.”

People waving their arms? I didn’t see anyone waving their arms. I looked around, but I saw no signs of arm-waving weirdos.

Instead, I saw a classroom full of old people, and a very tall, serious, scary man at the front of the classroom trying to figure out the multimedia system.

I froze at the doorway. Probably not the best way to act like you know what you are doing, but that’s what I did. I looked around the room.

Most of the people were sitting at desks, but there was a lady standing and pushing buttons on a control in what seemed to be a random fashion. I looked toward the projection of the menu she was navigating. It was completely foreign to me.

The scary tall serious man at the front of the room spoke. “Do you know how to set this up?”

No, I whimper to myself. “I can try,” I say to him.

The lady tries to hand me the remote. I look disdainfully at it, knowing that I wouldn’t be any better with it than she is. I tell her to hold on to it for a moment as I approach the front of the classroom, toward the computer desk.

As I get nearer, the scary old man comes closer to me, so I walk faster so that he doesn’t intercept my path. I also fix my gaze on the computer when suddenly...

Something seems familiar. I see the computer and hiding next to it is a small touch-screen monitor. I suck in my breath and pray that the little monitor is really the controls for the classroom. I’ve used controls like that before.

I touch the screen and it wakes up. I remind myself not to giggle at my success. It is a control system, but it looks different from the ones I’ve used. I stare at it for a moment and, to buy time, I ask the scary man, “What are you trying to do? Do you need the computer or a DVD player?” I try to read all of the buttons as fast as I can while he responds.

“Actually, it’s a tape.”

A tape? There’s no button for tape. No button for cassette either. Crap crap crap...

“We’re trying to watch a movie,” he clarifies.

Oh! A VHS! I click a few buttons on the menu searching for the VHS output, and...

I find it! Score! I hit it like a whack-a-mole and viola! The picture is playing on the projector.

“There you go,” I say entirely too quickly for anyone to understand me. I rush for the exit. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here.

“Wait,” the scary man calls.

I turn around with a smile, a lying smile that says I have all the time in the world and all I want to do is make his life easier.

“The sound,” he says.

Honestly, if he doesn’t know how to operate this stuff, how did he get this room in the first place?

“Uh,” I say idiotically as I make my way back to the little monitor. I’ve never had to use sound before. I don’t even know if there’s a sound menu.

I almost cried in relief when I saw the touch-screen menu. It had very few buttons now: play, pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, and VOLUME. I took all of the sounds off mute (after warning all the old people that they might want to plug their ears in case it was loud). That was the easiest solution of the day.

After solving two problems in a row, I felt much more comfortable in that room. The best part was that all of the old people started praising and thanking me. I was a hero! And I really didn’t do anything, now that I thought about it.

It was a good feeling. And it wasn’t even ruined when my coworker told me that he just puked because Taco Time gave them a beef burrito instead of his veggie request. He’s Indian. Not such a great day for him.