Today I Celebrated a Typical 21st Century Birthday

I received my new credit card, special delivery. It replaced my previous card closed due to fraud. Of course I called to activate my new card. Fifteen minutes of birthday on hold.

The Discovery Card folks notified me that my request for a Discovery card had been turned down. That pleased me, since I had not made that request. Identity fraud strikes again. Another fifteen minutes gone.

My utility company emailed me today, twice. Once it told me I was successfully enrolled in its easy-pay program and then it wrote that my enrollment had been voided. Naturally, I called.

Hoping for a sale, a young woman examined my utility account. "You don't have a cable," she cried. "Don't you want a cable?"

"Why would I want a cable?"

"Oh, you know." She spoke so perkily. "For your T.V."

I have no T.V., so that settled that.

Twenty minutes gone on this one.

Then my brand new mouse stopped working. Nothing I tried helped so I called Apple Care. A young man focused on the problem; I turned my computer off and on for him a dozen different ways. He gave up and called the older technician, but nothing helped. "Take that mouse back to the Apple Store and tell them to give you a new one." Fifty-seven minutes gone for nothing.

Still, I set out for the Apple Store in Village Pointe. Twenty-four minutes and 15.8 miles later, I arrived.

"It doesn't work." I thrust the mouse at a round guy in a black sweat shirt.

He hooked it to a store model, and it worked. "Bring in your computer," he said.

So I drove home, unplugged my huge computer, hauled it to the car, and drove back. A new technician, taller and fiercer looking, hooked up my computer. The mouse worked just fine. To be on the same side, he deleted a little this and that, and I took mousy home. It's working now. An hour and a half and 64 miles of birthday spent in Village Pointe to figure that out.

Not that I didn't also celebrate my birthday today in the old fashioned manner: meals with friends, a free sundae at Petrow's soda fountain. And cards, including one from the president of Fort Hays State University where I worked 16 years ago; one from my financial adviser; one from the University of Nebraska Foundation that I mention in my will, and one from my sister.

Still, "Happy Birthday to You" rings in my ears. I intend to celebrate many, many more.

But maybe 20th Century style next year.