Not too long ago, my laptop's brain went kerplooey and I called the company's tech support line to see what I should do next. A nice young man from a call centre in South Carolina walked me through some steps to see if the laptop was having a hardware problem or a software problem or what.
To my admittedly ignorant and untrained ear, he sounded like Kenneth from 30 Rock, so that's who I imagined for the rest of the call, even though I knew that this man was not in fact Kenneth at all.
The first step Not-Kenneth talked me through was to bypass the Screen of Death and gently coax the laptop to connect to the internet. A status bar came up on the screen, showing how far along the connection process was. It went ludicrously slowly. Like I think it took around 20 minutes for the laptop and router to "find" each other.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting there with Not-Kenneth on the line, just...silently watching my laptop's status bar not move. Feeling like a giant dork for not knowing how to make pleasant small talk to fill in the time. I guess Not-Kenneth wasn't being chatty either, but still.
So at around the twelve minute mark of this mostly-silent phone call, I decide that I can totally turn it around. I can be one of those casually chatty people! Why the hell not? I was gonna just adopt a whole new personality. A fun, vivacious, effortlessly social personality.
And so, in a light, conversational tone, I said "Y'know, the frustrating thing about this is that the laptop and router are sitting literally inches away from each other. I just wanna make 'em acknowledge each other, y'know? Just, like, mash 'em together like a little kid making her dollies kiss." And then I made a blarrrrgh sound, which I believe is Megalomaniacal Toddler-Speak for dance, puppets, dance.
The customer service rep gave a tiny, panicked chuckle and the call lapsed into a whole new vibe I like to call Silence: Now With 3,000% More Awkwardness!
So that went well.
That's pretty funny
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