The brand-new coffee has blinked its clock at me. I stared at it for a moment, trying to intuitively figure out how to make the blinking stop, but the thing had so many buttons, I’m a bit afraid of pushing the wrong ones. What is the special sequence I need to set the clock instead of launching nuclear warheads out of South Dakota?
If this thing asks me if I want to play a game, I’m running for my bunker.
The new coffee machine is easily the most high-tech piece of equipment we own in this house. Yes, I’m aware that we have phones and computers, TVs that can connect to the internet, and lightbulbs that turn on with just a word. But can they brew the perfect cup of coffee at 6:30 am and then tell you the time? No, they cannot. Stupid lightbulbs.
I got this coffee machine to try and normalize working from home for my wife. As the clock continued to blink at me, it asked me what time I want to start the morning brew.
“Um, In the morning.”
The clock blinks twice, which I think means “no”.
“How about early morning?”
Two blinks.
“Next Thursday, but only if that day falls on an odd number of the calendar.”
It starts to blink faster.
I leave to go finish some laundry as I think about my conversation and the blinking coffee pot that won’t do what I want it to do. It’s programable, but I assume that I need a degree in astrophysics to make it work. And honestly, who’s got time for that?
So, this is the thing about being a dad. Some days it feels like you have a thousand things to do, and no time to do them. Everyone’s problem comes to your doorstep. Some you can fix, some you can’t, and sometimes it just goes wrong. It can feel like a death from a thousand cuts.
I just wanted to make my wife some coffee, not program Skynet. It’s just another chore on my list. Something that needs my attention and pushes back the other responsibilities that I have to get done. It can be overwhelming, so much so that a simple coffee maker is making me have a midlife crisis. It probably can act as a therapist, too, though so maybe I will take the thirty minutes to read the instructions and get this baby set up.
“Hey, dad,” my 13-year-old son said as I came back downstairs. “I’ve got coffee brewing. Do you want some?”
“What?”
“Coffee. You want some?”
“How did you get it to work?” I asked.
“I read the instructions and did it. It’s not that hard. I set it to make a new pot every morning. There’s a lot of different strengths of brews, too. I picked the one mom said she liked best.”
My boy. My sweet wonderful boy.
“And the clock?” I asked him.
“I set it. That was annoying.”
There’re a couple of things here that hit me. First off, maybe every problem doesn’t need to come to my doorstep. Maybe my kids are capable of handling a lot of things on their own. And the fact that they are showing some initiative to do that, well, that’s a sign of maturity. It makes me both ecstatic and a bit sad at the same time. I don’t want to be needed all the time, until that time I’m not needed.
The next thing that hit me was that he’s not the only one that’s getting older. What age am I? I am of the age that I need my children to show up and get the electronics to stop blinking 12:00. That’s how old I am.
I have no idea how it happened, when it happened, or if my coffee machine can play VHS or Beta tapes. I just know that I’ve reached that point in my life where I’m probably going to start saying the word dagnabbit a lot as I talk about rain coming because I can feel it in my knees.
But at least my wife can get a solid cup of coffee. Or a latte. Or a cappuccino. Or a Grande with half-calf and a twist of lemon.
I still have no idea how this thing works, but this time, I don’t have to. My kids got me.
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