Dj Steckelberg

I think that maybe I was born in the wrong era. When I was but a wee lad, we never worried about directions to things. When we would get a new Nintendo game, the first thing we would do is throw those lousy direction booklets out. After all, we only had a couple of buttons and a directional pad which 98 percent pointed directly to the right. There really weren’t a whole lot of options.

Things are a bit different now.

I can’t figure out my DVD remote.

I would read the directions and figure out how to get back to the menu while watching a movewithout turning the power off first, but I threw them out.

I have tried to read the manual for my new scooter, but the English translator they used must have been made by rocket scientists. But not linguists, or professors in English.

For instance, I read recently that I need to keep my bike “air-tight in the lower mists so am not to folly miter.” Now I thought this might be pretty useful and should read on.

I did.

“When inclusion apart moderator installs, should be not before right blinker.” I can’t really get to the bottom of this. I admit that I am not the most mechanically inclined, but I thought I was pretty good at reading. Now I know why I paid $23 an hour for labor to get my brakes fixed.

So last night I hear this laugh waft from the basement. Slowly, deliberately it ascends the stairs growing louder and louder.

I knew to be afraid. The only time I hear this laugh is when someone is about to make a fool of me. I cower in the corner hearing this laugh reach the kitchen, then the living room. It zeros in on me and then pauses. I wait, letting my dread well to its maximum. Then the laugh strikes.

My girlfriend has brought this laugh to taunt me with this time, and in her hands she holds the reason for the laugh. An air purifier that I had bought over a year ago was in the right hand. And in her left was the filter for the air purifier … STILL IN ITS PLASTIC BAG!!!! That’s right. I have been purifying nothing for over a year now. It has been running. I assumed it had been working. I am an ass.

The laugh eventually left me alone. I heard it turn and go back through the kitchen. It strode into the basement ready to get me again. I can still hear it down there. My girlfriend chuckling every now and then. Reminding me what a dink I can really be when I put my mind to it. Oh, it’s there all right! Leaving me wondering why I didn’t at least look at the pictures from those directions to the air purifier.

DJ Steckelberg may not have pure air, but he’s funny. Reach him at [email protected].