The Old Way is here. It's always been here. It's hiding beneath the surface, camouflaged in beige and brown with pockets filled with hard-boiled sweets. And it's really annoying.
Welcome back!
First time here? Then you’re going to want to check out the previous chapters:
Now then … let’s move onto Part 3 of The Old Way.
III
The Internet
One of my favourite things to do is to ask the carers how to use the computer. When I ask them, you can see the colour drain from their faces. It’s always a different carer, but they’re usually the same — early teens, greasy, and full of fried chicken.
“But we just told you yesterday, Charlie,” the young carer will say.
“I can’t get the damn thing to come on. I think it’s broken.”
This is when I act defiant, stamp my stick against the floor, huff and puff, that kind of thing. I act like it’s their fault.
“I think you must have done something to it. You filled it up with viruses and porn.” Here is when I point at them accusingly.
“Okay, go sit down at the computer and I’ll come and have a look in a minute,” they say, taking the bait.
When they come to the computer and sit down next to me, they don’t realise that I’ve unplugged everything.
“Charlie, did you unplug it?” they say.
“Yes … I was just trying to fix the damn thing,” I say and they look at me in utter disbelief. “Not my fault you broke it in the first place,” I add.
“Okay, Charlie. Fine. Let me plug it all back in.” The spotty teen will then climb underneath the computer desk, and start fiddling with the cables.
This is when I start to bang my stick against the monitor.
“Charlie, what are you doing?” they shout from under the desk.
“Just trying to help,” I say. “Just trying to help.”
When they finally get everything plugged in and they power it all on, the next challenge they face is that I’ve changed the password.
“I don’t understand,” they say. “It’s not working. It should be working.”
With every failed login attempt their faces grow redder. I have to struggle to keep myself from bursting.
“See, I told you,” I say as I bang it again with my stick. “Broken.”
This is when they ask me to leave. They say they’ll fix it. And after a few hours of frustration and some technical help from some guy on the phone they reset the password.
And I’ll do the same again in a week or so. I’ll keep doing it, because it is my practice — it is the Old Way.
The only time I’d ever seen Donald open up was when I started talking about my password change method. We were sitting alone in his room drinking coffee — instant, but drinkable.
I was doing my best to talk about the heroes of the Old Way — Keith The Great, and Gunther Green, the only known oldie to have driven through a family’s living room and straight through the patio door into the back garden.
And then there was Sheila The Ozzie. She would straight up punch ten-year old kids in the stomach. They couldn’t say anything, because she was old. The kids weren’t allowed to punch back. And if they told their parents they wouldn’t believe them. She punched them in the stomach because she knew it wouldn’t bruise. She was crafty like that. And she made her own birthday cards. Like I said … crafty.
And all the while, nothing. Donald drank quietly from his coffee. But then I mentioned my password reset technique and out of nowhere he laughed.
“That’s a good one,” he said, chuckling. “I like that one. I like it a lot.”
“You do, eh?” I said, smiling.
“You know what you could do,” he said as he turned to face me. “You could hack into confidential government files from the computer here, I dunno, maybe some tax dodging records or something. You’d get the place blacklisted. Soon you’d have an agent down here looking into it. Who would they suspect? The elderly? Who don’t know a thing about technology? Or would they suspect that nonce who does so-called tech support?”
“Kevin?” I said.
“Yeh, whatever … Kevin would be shipped off to some black site, on his back, preparing for his first waterboarding within hours.”
I laughed, but I wasn’t sure what I was laughing at. A joke, I think.
“Sure,” I said, still smiling. “If only we knew how to do it.”
“I can do it,” he said.
I let the words hang in the air for a second, before waving him off.
“Okay,” I said as I placed my empty mug on the side. “Sure you can … and I can poo solids.”
I forced myself to laugh as I left his room and walked back to my own. I sat down on my bed and looked at my closed door. On the other side of it, in the room opposite, was a man I knew nothing about. And suddenly the thought was quite terrifying, or exciting, or maybe I’ll have peas tonight or … wait … I forgot what I was talking about again.
We’re nearing the end …
… find out more in tomorrow’s chapters.
Written by Luke Kondor