Last night I couldn’t get the idea of punishing my Blackberry out of my mind. I was running over scenarios of destruction in my mind. How could I best bring my emotional needs to bear on this repugnant and abominable device? I thought of many things:
- Taking the Blackberry out to the dock with our office sledgehammer and dashing it in a flurry of epithets and cussing. Screaming while I extracted a primal retribution for all the ways the device let me down and angered me.
- Building a little bonfire and setting the piece of crap on fire. Watching it burn, drinking a very fine bottle of wine and when it’s all burned down to ash, putting it out manually.
- Giving it a Viking Funeral, putting it on a little wooden boat and setting that on fire and pushing it off to float in a lake or pond.
- Violent but paced deconstruction. Getting out my tools and pulling the device apart and unscrewing everything and when it’s in a neat pile, beating it with a hammer.
Then I thought about maybe having my assistant video me turning my Blackberry into a pile of slag in some of the less-personal-approaches to destroying it. Then as I laid there last night thinking about it, a part of me piped up about how if there was a video, first it would be hilarious, very Office Space of me, but it would also be rather incriminating as I would be technically destroying a workplace device.
As I continued to play scenarios through my head I started thinking about truly sadistic things I could do to this obnoxious horrible device and it hit me. It gives me a different non-destructive path to take that actually is more spiritually torturous. I have resolved to consign my Blackberry to a Velveteen Rabbit Hell. I will remove it’s battery and I will put it in a dirty disused cardboard box and I will lock it away in a locker nobody ever uses and I will forget all about it. It will stay in the box, inert, forgotten, and effectively gone from my life. Everyone wins. No video of me destroying it, no crime, nothing to upset anyone and I still get to punish it, long-term. When I do remember it I will relish its silent cardboard grave.
I know and do understand how frustrated you are and have been with your Blackberry. However….you might want to consider allowing a US serviceman to have the device so that he could have simple connection with his family. It would serve a better purpose when all is said and done. I know there are groups that are willing to take them, along with their chargers and distribute them to our military members overseas. If this device couldn't behave well for you perhaps it has another purpose – to connect a serviceman with his family. Just a thought…….
The only problem with charities that we've seen around here is that they only want the newest primo stuff. "Beggars can't be choosers" never really hit the mark for any charity we've ever had the displeasure of working with. They all want Factory-Sealed boxes and if you have used stuff, they react as if you pelted them with holy water. I wouldn't even know where to start to give away these devices. 🙁 It's not that I'm unwilling, it's just that I don't know where to start.