So I have to blog this great story that happened about 6 years ago. My sister and her family lived with my mom and I, and my sister had a son who was about 6 years old and was the sweetest kid you would ever meet. One day he wanted to show me what he had gotten on a game called ‘Fish Frenzy’ where you try to survive as a fish. So, I went downstairs with him as he ran over and grabbed the laptop. Now, I had watched these kids many times as they played with the laptops and they were far from kind to them.
So we got down there, and he started up the program. The computer sluggishly attempted to load the game, but years of the gunk and abuse that children put on computers was starting to show and the program was taking too long. So he clicked the program again… Still, it was trying to load, but still it was not succeeding. Since once didn’t do it he tried again. When twice didn’t do it, he took the next logical step that a 6 year old could think of and that was to load the program 73 more times in under a minute while saying C-O-M-E-O-N!!! I watched in amusement until finally he looked up at me and with a sad face said “Can you please make it work?”
I knelt down and pretended to examine this poor laptop. I knew that the only problem it had was that it was moving slow, so I said to him “Oh no. Oh no. This is bad! I have seen this before.” His eyes got big, clearly concerned that he had broken it. “What is it?” He nervously asked. “You see, you kids have all been so bad and mean to this laptop by dropping it, spilling on it, using it as a step-stool; that it has finally stopped working. I don’t think it is going to work until things are made right.” I could tell he was confused, so I continued on “Here is what you need to do. Get down on your knees. Look the computer straight in the monitor, and you need to tell it you are sorry. And you need to really mean it. Its feelings have been hurt, so make it count.”
He quickly dropped to his knees, put his hands together like he was praying and said in the most sincere voice I had ever heard “I’m sooooo sorry! I know I was not nice to you, but I am so sorry. I will be better to you, I promise.” Right then, as if the computer had really heard him, the program started to go, and ran with no problem at all.
We never spoke about his apology again, but about a week later, I heard his mom yelling at him to go get the laptop he had hid, and I heard him say “I will go get it, but you have to make Annie promise to be nicer to it from now on.”
As Random As Random Gets 