A. had spent the last hour moping around upstairs, sure that her beloved computer game was forever corrupted by her own barely considered and swiftly enacted change of her computer’s resolution. Click. Click. Black. It had happened too quickly for her to back out. Control-Z. Restart. Still black. It was at that point that she’d lost all touch on reality and the wailing started. Like the woman in mourning as her husband burns on the funeral pyre, A. reeled with grief, the tears and strained moans coming haphazardly. She had fallen into the black abyss and her brother came to save her.
Clicking, reconnecting, resetting, searching, coding, restarting and more clicking; S.’s patience was on display as he calmly sought a way to reset A.’s resolution to one that the monitor would recognize, one that would let her play her game again. And finally it worked.
“You just need to turn the monitor on when you want to play,” he told her as he walked past her, sitting chin in hand on the stairs.
She sighed heavy and low then stood to go into the living room.
“It’s not gonna work,” she said to no one. “There’s no way he could fix it.” Click.
And with that click she realized just how magical her brother really is. “OH.” She ran to his room, busting the door open to give him an uncomfortably long hug and a kiss which is almost always refused, but managed to sit stoicly through. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re the best man in the house!”
Being the only man in the house, he wasn’t impressed.
“He’s the best big brother I know,” I shouted down to her.
“Yes! Yes! You’re the best big brother a kid could ever have! What can I do for you? I will do anything! Do you want a snack? A drink? A back massage? I’ll do anything!”
S. sat facing his own computer. “Anything?”
“Yes! Whatever.”
“Okay, then please just go away.”
And with that it was over. A. happily ran back to play and S. was back to being a typical teenage boy.
