Neck Flits

You should know that THIS FREAKING WEEK we have our next Strangerville Live show. This is the most excited I've been for one of our events, mostly because we are in an amazing new venue, Meg has promised to tell us a story, AND THE FREAKING SUZZZZZZZZ IS COMING. I know that you are used to me speaking in hyperbole, but know ye this, the Suzzzzzzzz's story is one of my favorite stories I've ever heard. And I'm telling a story as well--one that I've never told anyone before, and one that I've been waiting for the right moment to share.

We have some limited seating for this show and so we strongly encourage you to get your tickets at this link if you haven't already. We are so excited to spend a fun Salt Lake evening with you this Friday, if you can make it.

And while you're at it, and before you jump into today's written story, please enjoy one of the most interesting Strangerville stories we've had in a long time:

*****

Last weekend my dad called me and said that Gmac was having major technological problems that he couldn't resolve.


My 80-something-year-old grandma has been diligently attempting to use Facebook ("Faceoff"), Instagram ("Instacookie"), Podcast App ("iPods"), and Netflix ("Neck Flits"), for several years. And we're all super proud of her. Even though she is terrible at it.

When she has a problem with technology, she calls my father. AKA, the worst person in the entire world to call when you have a problem with technology. I lovingly refer to this situation as "the blind leading the dead."

I mean, this wasn't always the case. When my family got an answering machine in 1989, we all hovered around it as Bob authoritatively told us how it could be used, and then recorded the outgoing message with an inarguable level of patriarchy, for it was 1989, "you have reached 761-9366, please leave a message and we'll get back to you just as soon as we can."

The professionalism of this voicemail could not be matched.

And we aaaaaaalways got back to everyone just as soon as we could.

(For you pranksters, Bob and Cathie moved after 1989 and changed their phone number, so your amazing prank phone call will not be appreciated. Call me at 801.919.2112 for that purpose).

But, even though Bob McCann led the country in technological understanding, there came a time between 1989 and 2018 when he wasn't exactly Steve Jobs.

And that's not a criticism. His own son still struggles with the microwave. I am hardly more knowledgeable about technology than Bob McCann. In fact, I recently had a mini meltdown as Skylar was setting up my Alexa in my home, during which event I actually screamed the words "I'M TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND LIFE AND I'LL NEVER BE GOOD AT ANYTHING."

The McCann family tries desperately not to be stereotypical, and so my mother, who worked in tech support for 300 years until her retirement in 2017, has very little patience for mine and Bob's incompetencies.

The point is, Gmac, while having dozens of better options than Bob McCann, calls Bob McCann when suddenly Neck Flits or iPods stop working. And after my well-meaning father who should be awarded the medal of freedom for his patience spent the better part of an entire Saturday most definitely making her problems worse, he finally called me and asked me if I could go to Gmac's place and help her.

I know my own limitations, and fresh off of "I'M TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND LIFE AND I'LL NEVER BE GOOD AT ANYTHING," I called Skylar, who is a consultant (not a real job) in the tech industry (not a real industry) and asked, nay, demanded, that he go to Gmac's care facility and resolve all of her tech problems and get her active on geriatric tinder.

Gmac welcomed Skylar with open arms, having paraded him through the care facility on at least 2 previous occasions, during which she told other women in their 80s that he was her "booooooooyfriend."

And 10 minutes after we arrived in the place, Skylar had uncovered the full story from Gmac, which was essentially this:

Gmac had noticed some charge on her bank account that was unfamiliar so she called the bank, the UN, and the FBI and reported a terrorist plot, prompting every financial institution to cancel every one of her financial accounts, including any card associated with those accounts. She then later realized that the charge that caused the commotion was a Netflix charge, which I had set up for her when I purchased for her Apple TV so that she could finally watch "The Crown," besides the one episode that's about "sex, and why do they even need to do that it was such a good show." After realizing that that terrorist charge was just Netflix, which was not a terrorist organization, she had called the bank back, and in her words "had a very long and productive conversation," of which I would pay upwards of $10,000 to have a recording, explaining that the disputed charge had all just been a misunderstanding.

But the bank had explained to her that it was too late and that it had closed several bank cards and accounts on account of her dramatic reports. And so, Skylar, whose grandmother this is not, spent the better part of a Sunday sifting through a box of cards and receipts and pictures from World War II and several other wars that didn't even make it into your history book as Gmac complained that she couldn't find big enough sunglasses to fit over her glasses, all so he could reconfigure her many online accounts BECAUSE SKYLAR IS A SAINT.

He eventually got her back into Netflix, and then gave her a very long and overly-detailed lesson about how to use it to find old episodes of The Lawrence Welk Show, or as Gmac calls it "New Episodes of the Lawrence Welk Show." And then we left the care facility and Skylar wondered why he ever answers my phone calls as I asked him "what's the difference between Alexa and the Cyrie."

So yeah. You should definitely come to our show on Friday.

And you should definitely check out this week's AMAZING episode of Strangerville.

This time in Strangerville, a woman in Hawaii buys a gift for her parents that ends up changing her life forever.

Story

23 and My Parents, by Alex (music by bensound.com)

Production by Eli McCann and Meg Walter

~It Just Gets Stranger