Back before the pandemic, I bought and worked an investment property with an on-site business in upstate New York. It was tedious and required an “all-hands-on-deck” approach.
As such, my younger cousins eager to explore this area volunteered to help me set up my temporary housing and office. While I couldn’t go off exploring the surrounding area, I would send them off on errands on the occasions they would come up with me from New Jersey.
On one of these occasions, I needed a printer – like, that very same day. I was working on the roof of the place and just didn’t have time to leave that part of the job so I asked my cousins if they would be interested in taking a trip to Albany to purchase one for me, but under one caveat:
I wanted a cheap laser printer. Not an inkjet printer.
Technology has increased so much for us all that digital organizing and storage has made life so much easier compared to having physical copies, the need for file cabinets, etc. Printers, by in large, have gone by the wayside only needed for specific jobs. This is why I don’t want inkjet printers as I feel they are too costly in the long term to maintain especially if you’re printing repeated documents. You want something cheap, fast and colorless. Hence, laser printers.
As I handed my credit card over to my cousins, I begged them: “please, DO NOT buy an inkjet printer. get the cheapest laser printer you can find.”
I even did the hands clasped prayer/begging pose.
As I watched them drive off down the mountain en route to Albany, I privately hoped that they would pay attention. After all, I was giving them carte blanche to my credit card so they could have a little fun in Albany too, take some foodie selfies in the restaurants there, you know…stuff young people like to do.
Anyway, in the rush and busy work of the day, they had already come back from Albany and left while I was picking up materials. It wasn’t until I was settled in for the night that I remembered the printer errand I sent them on. A text back from them revealed that they had set up my new printer at the office, that I was going to love the new unit because it was cheap and had a digital scanner on it, and that my credit card was inside the scanner plate. I went to bed relieved.
Then, I saw the printer the next day:
I just took a deep breath and let it be. Given that, in the very least, the printer was cheap, I just decided to work with it even though it was….an inkjet printer.
To this day, it occupies a space in my livingroom despite me having purchased a sub $100 laser printer a few months ago. I will look at it from time to time and wonder if I should just throw it away. But it has decent copying and scanning functionality, just that the form factor takes up space.
lol, I don’t know. It has managed to forcefully lodge itself into my life. I may or may not end up donating it but on the other hand, I’m not sure if there are other more palpable tokens of my memories from that somewhat strange period of time.
Speaking of brothers of all types, the cover of this post was from the movie Stepbrothers. As with most of the comedy movies of this time, the humor is so deceptively sharp. But with just the right amount of slapstick, it gives the whole film a larger dimension.
Have a good weekend y’all!
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