A decade back, a colleague of mine proudly exclaimed, “My wife won’t go anywhere without me!”
I wanted to burst his bubble and tell him it wasn’t something he should be proud of (or happy about), but I decided against it.
In sharp contrast, my wife is fiercely independent, and I love that. So much so, if it were possible, she would have had both our kids by herself.
The other day, I spotted her standing in front of her laptop with her arms akimbo, staring into the screen.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Nobody tells me what to do!” she exclaimed.
I turned to look at the laptop screen, and there was an alert “Battery low! Plug in your laptop to a power source.”
Then she narrowed her eyes at the screen and asked me, “Doesn’t that sound less like information and more like attitude?”
I thought the matter would end there. It did not.
She folded her arms tighter, as though entering a staring contest with the charging notification itself. The laptop, clearly intimidated, dimmed a little more.
“Are you going to plug it in?” I asked.
“That,” she said with the calm of a freedom fighter, “is exactly what it wants me to do.”
For the next ten minutes, she operated on 3% battery and pure principle.
I have seen people challenge authority.
I have seen people question the system.
I have now seen someone go to war with a dying laptop.
Eventually, the laptop shut down.
She looked at the black screen, looked at me, and said, “See? Now nobody is telling me anything.”
“It is dead,” I added.
“Yes, that’s what happens to anyone who tries to tell me what to do,” she said and walked away.
Note: Since then, I charge her laptop before it drops below 20%. Not because I care about the device or my wife, but I don’t want to witness another revolution.