Mooga!

I had a bad day. Actually, my bad day was really last night when my computer got a virus. In retrospect, I had a bad night and a bad morning.

I hadn't had a virus before; well, my computer hadn’t had one. I wasn’t looking at porn when I got it either! I was just being vain and googling my blog to see if anyone out there on the Internet was lauding it or stealing from it; I happen to go to some site in Indonesia and click, and that’s when my blog got the chills and started to sneeze.

Anyway, I tried doing all the right things; however, they were apparently all the wrong things. I went to bed at 1am fretting that I had killed my best friend, my brilliant pink laptop, Peony Jane. When I told a fellow co-worker about the dilemma, the co-worker looked at my laptop and said, “Well, you got a virus because it’s pink!”

Obviously, he does not think in pink. All the Great Ones do. Everyone knows that E = mc², all people are created equal, and "Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world."

I had called a friend earlier, and he actually went home, got his anti-virus application, and then came into work and promptly began to treat my virus. This being my first time, err, with a virus, I remained calm and collected; okay, pants on fire, because I was totally freaking out. He had a few plans of attack on this vanity virus, and after running a program, he left and said as he walked out of my office, “Don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

Sometimes you feel like you’re in the worst place ever, even though it isn’t; people get viruses themselves and on their computers every day. Every now and then, it’s especially nice to be reminded that where you felt there was only an “I,” there is a “we.” It’s a “we” that jettisons you out of the bad place so fast that the voices in your head scream “Wheeeeeeee!”

My friend's third plan of attack was the charm. After knowing that Peony Jane would survive, I then had to focus on work. Of course, this brought me from bad night to bad morning to an I-have-an-impossible-deadline afternoon.

The whole day had been a whirlwind of emotion. Most of the emotion was fear, angst, dread, anticipation, but then there was the “we” part that kept me smiling. This may sound trite, but life is amazing sometimes; the part I find amazing is how you sometimes need to go to bad place to realize how wonderful it is to be back in a good place, making you appreciate life’s littlest moments.

When I left work, I drove by Kimball’s, a local mini-golf and ice cream venue. I saw a mother and her two small children waiting at the crosswalk, so I came to a stop to let cross the street. As they walked across the road, the little girl, who looked to be about 5 years old, waved non-stop and shouted, “Thank you!” As I passed them, she was still waving at me; I shouted out the window, “Have a good time!” and drove off smiling.

Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the supermarket. I was making my corroded fish for dinner (that is, haddock with Ritz cracker crumbs). As I stood at the seafood counter, a man with his young son in his carriage pulled up in front of the lobster tank to take a look.

Dad said, “There they are!”
The boy stood up and said, “Mooga! Mooga!”
If Dr. Doolittle had the opportunity to talk to lobsters, I’m sure he would have said, “Mooga! Mooga!”
While I was waiting for someone to skin my haddock, the Dad ordered some fish.
The boy asked me, “What are they doing?”
I said, “That lobster is giving that lobster a piggy back ride. And that lobster is telling that lobster a joke.”
He giggled, said “Mooga!” a few more times to the lobsters in the tank, and then his Dad wheeled him away smiling and so was I.

The man behind the counter handed me my haddock and asked if I wanted anything else in addition to my fish. Before I got my fish, I had mentioned that I might like a few shrimp, and before I could answer, he said, “Oh, that' right; you want shrimp.” I smiled, and then an older woman standing further down the seafood case asked, “Did you say something about shrimp?”

He walked toward her and said, “Do you want shrimp? I can help you in a minute.” She was probably just a little bit older than my mother would have been if she were still alive. She said to him, “Oh, no. I want cheese.”

He glanced at the other man behind the counter and said to her “Oh, he can help you then.” She said she wanted a hunk of something, and then he said, “Oh, you want to go over to the cheese section.” She seemed a bit confused, though she giggled after he told her that, and said, “Oh, I should have known.”

As she wheeled her cart by me, I smiled at her and said, “Hi.” She beamed back at me and said, “Hi,” as if she had known me all her life. Just then, I wanted to go over and hug her; after she passed, I took my shrimp from the man, began to push my cart, and walked off smiling.

Huge things are sometimes not so huge. You get through it, even though you don't know how you will. Whether it be a good friend or the strangers who just cross the road, say “Mooga!” or are lost at the seafood counter, there’s always someone, whether they know it or not, who’s going to help you get through it. ♥

Post-it Note to the Criminal Justice System: People convicted of creating bad viruses should be punished severely. I propose that said individuals should be locked in a room for a week. While in that room, the criminal will be interrogated every hour by a different seven-year old and be forced to answer said child’s every brain-numbing question. If said criminal fails to answer a question, the criminal will be forced to clean a cat box or walk barefoot over a coughed-up furball; like they say, payback is a b*tch!