Que Sera Sara?

Once upon a time, some very kind and generous parents gifted some lady an iPad.

She loved it very, very much.

Primarily because it let her FaceTime with loved ones far away and properly read pdfs anywhere, (but also, secretly, because Dots could be a lifesaver on a cold dreary platform hundreds of miles from home when her train was delayed AGAIN and the four-hour meeting she’d just survived had jagged on and on like rusty nails being driven into her brain-socket).

The beloved iPad had traveled to countries near and far, across oceans and continents. It had taken studious notes at important conferences and messaged her sister pictures of hedgehogs.

Until one day, disaster struck.

Scrolling through insipid and amusing Facebook posts calmly on the sofa, like any normal evening, the lady held the cherished device’s smart-cover like a book spine (imagine this rotated 90-degrees).

And that day, just precisely at that moment and at no other time it’s smart-existence, the magnetic strip holding case to screen decided it didn’t want to be a magnet anymore and gave up the ghost.

The iPad, almost in slow-motion, slipped casually from its weakened grasp, the corner banging loudly on the hardwood floor at her feet.

The screen pixellated in all manner of colors, imitating a dirty sega cartridge booting up.

Shortly the screen improved enough to constantly refresh grayscale bands of uselessness and it seemed all was lost.

Every Puppini Sisters track impetuously downloaded from iTunes.

Every YA genre novel bought on Kindle.

An appendage had been amputated and could never be replaced.

Much whimpering later, a spouse arrived. Unburdened by emotional attachment to a functional object (the monster), the spouse set about Googling “ipad screen broken dark”. This led him to a not-at-all-sketchy-looking forum and the following advice:

Forty-nine other people seemed to think this was a great idea. And they had nothing to lose.

He flipped the churning black screen over and tapped it with increasing vigor.

In the end something akin to voraciously burping an adamantium-baby may have taken place. Who’s to say?

After several rounds the home screen popped clear of the darkness like nothing had ever been amiss.

And so what if it had? The technology of the future seemed to have completely weird hacky solutions which couldn’t possibly be made sense of, so best not to try.

So the (not at all monstrous) hero-spouse and the lady went back about their evening and all was well with the world once more.

The End.