He Traveled from House to House with His Little Black Bag

That's how small-town doctors used to do it, birthing babies and sewing lacerations in the bedrooms and kitchens of his neighbors. Back in the early '30s, one even performed microsurgery on my grandfather's thumb after an unfortunate wood chopping accident, reattaching severed nerves and arteries with technical prowess decades ahead of his time. A great man, now long gone.

I get the feeling that profession's still alive though.

A friend has made it a point recently to mention often that I seem to have this type of small-town mentality. I know the people in my local diner, who know me, who know my grandparents and parents, because the first time I ate their I was fed formula in my car-seat/baby carrier atop a booth. I recognize the various local indigents and can drive certain roads more by feel and muscle memory than by sight.

And I'm starting to become a small-town tech support.

"Oh, god, Mrs. McInerney's got that bug again? Let me get my antivirus…"

"How did you even manage to pull that out? Were you yanking on it?"

"Oh man, I'm going to need you to boil some water, hand me a dust rag, and get me the longest length of USB cable you can find, stat!" (The water would be for tea.)

Up shot: today I made enough to cover the cost of some new headphones, so that's a plus.

Now if I could just get my family to run two sessions of AdAware in safe mode and call me in the morning….


Screw that, call me after noon.