Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

“The computer is broken. Now what?”

I’m incredulous. This brilliant person before me who has inherited his father’s great mind and his mother’s common sense, is asking a question that would not have been asked forty years ago. I dig around in the junk drawer and come up with a number 4 pencil, and hand it to my genius son.

“What am I supposed to do with this, Mom?” he asks with a straight face.

“You’ve an English paper due, correct?” I try not to sound too sarcastic.

“Yeah, but the computer’s broken. The assignment can’t be written with a pencil on paper.”

He’s serious.

“Did your teacher say that?”

“Didn’t have to. No one hand-writes their reports.”

“I’ll bet it’s permissible under the circumstances, John,” I say.

“I can’t Google anything.”

“Oh, my goodness, you might have to crack a book.” Now I am sounding sarcastic.

I think I see where this is going.

“This will take me all night this way.”

“So, you don’t know your topic, and you were going to Google it and cut and paste? Am I close?”

“That would be cheating, Mom.”

“I know.”

He learned cursive so that shouldn’t be an obstacle, and anyway, there is an eraser on the pencil. I guide him over to the desk and get some paper.

“There you go, my dear. All set.”

He starts writing, then stops.

“What’s the problem now, honey? Need a sharpener?”

“I need the spelling and punctuation checker, or I’ll get an F big time.”

I stack up every book I can find on punctuation and grammar, along with Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.

“Gees, Mom,” he says, “Can’t I just go to the library and use the computer there?”

“Nope, for tonight you’re stuck in the Stone Age.”