Ink Buying

So we were out of printer ink. The cheap printer is an ink hog. The black goes out quicker than…than a very quick thing.

My middle daughter calls me while I’m teaching my night class, “Daddy, did you get printer ink today? I need to print out my speech tonight.”

“Oh, yeah, (dang, shoot!) I’ll call Fry’s to see if they have any…”

While my students are finishing up their projects in the lab, I look the store up on the internet, and then I phone them to check if they have the necessary supplies. I am suspicious because in the past, it seems that they had truckloads of all the other ink cartridges, but MY model was completely out.

Not wanting a repeat, and being near desperate, I held while the boy looked up and down the ink aisle, searching for my cartridge. What is the picture on the front, what number was that, have you seen it here before…

My frustration was beginning to mount when he said “Here it its…T013, black!”

“Great,” I said, “how many do you have?”

“Oh, we have a lot of them.”

“How many is a lot, because I can feel it, there’s going to be a run on them just before I get there…what’s your name?”

“….uh, Jonathan…?”

“Well Jonathan, don’t let anybody buy them that’s not me…” I said. My students were listening to me. The ones that were left, since there were about 12 minutes left in the class time. “you’ll know me when I get there; I’m 6 foot 3, 245 pounds with a crooked nose. You WILL have one for me when I get there, won’t you Jonathan?”

“Y-y-es, uh how many do you want…we have a lot…”

“I just need one, but can you promise me there will be at least one when I get there, Jonathan?”

“Uh, yes sir.”

“OK, I’ll see you in about 20 minutes.”

When I got to Fry‘s Electronics, I asked to see Jonathan to thank him. They said they didn’t know who I was talking about.