My mom has been trying to catch up on Downton Abbey so she can watch this season on TV. She asked for my help finding a website on which to stream the episodes. Everything was going swimmingly until she got to the Christmas Special last night. The site she had been using up to that point wasn't working anymore so I found her another and, after letting it buffer for several minutes, left her to watch it.
Not five minutes later she was at the stairs. "Livvy!" she hollered. "I'm in trouble with the FBI!"
"What?!" I jumped up and raced to the stairwell. "What are you talking about?"
"The FBI locked my computer. Come see." She spoke as if this were a daily occurrence in our house and I half expected her to shrug.
I had been watching Matilda, because what else does one do with one's free time but watch baby Mara Wilson super glue Danny DeVito's hat onto his head? Hoping that this issue would simply be a matter of force quitting or, at worst, turning the computer off and turning it back on again (the only two things I know how to do on a computer), I left Mara Wilson to spy on the speedboat salesmen and begrudgingly went downstairs.
What I found when I got there was something I was utterly unprepared to handle. My brilliant mother thought to take a picture:
Now, you'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to seriously screw with me and my mom. Together we're quite a fearsome thing. We immediately noticed a handful of things about the message that betrayed its authenticity: 1) the inclusion of three small black-and-white pornographic images in a notice that supposedly came from the federal government; 2) the word "involvement" was spelled "invlovement"; 3) it offered no contact information; 4) it flaunted the fact that the FBI had taken control of files on the desktop to use as evidence against my mom, but the files of which they claimed to have taken control were photos of mugs and the artist's biography that my mom uses for pottery shows; and 5) the only way of sending in the $200 was to purchase a MoneyPak card at Kmart.
I'm pretty sure a fetus would know this was spam.
(More after the jump)
After we'd had a good laugh at how the federal government planned to ruin my mom's life with her artist's biography, we set to work. I executed a series of redundant tasks with no promising effects. It became clear that the virus had taken hold when moments after restarting and the tease of seeing the icons load onto the desktop, the screen was wiped white. I came to refer to this as the Grin of Satan.
I tried twice more to restart and twice more I fell victim to Satan's pearly whites (though I'm sure they're actually probably yellow). It was at this point that I suggested to my mother that she might call for backup.
With my brother's over-the-phone instructions, we started the computer in Safe Mode. I entered my mom's password and the icons started to load. I was feeling good. Cocky, in fact. Take that, Satan, I thought. Who's laughing now?
Evidently still Satan.
"We're supposed to type 'System Restore' in the search bar," my mom said, the phone still to her ear.
I stared at the white screen. "Yeah," I answered. "I'm thinking that's not gonna happen."
I was unwilling to accept defeat by a device whose inability to count to 2,000 at the turn of the century almost destroyed all of humanity. I started it up again and entered the password. At the first sign of icons loading I hurriedly located the search bar and managed to type "system restor" before the Grin of Satan came calling. One fucking letter, I thought. Fuck you, Satan. I repeated the process, this time getting a bit farther. One more time. A bit farther still. I took a deep breath, arranged my fingers purposefully along the keyboard, and tried one last time.
You know those stories on the news of people channeling their adrenaline into superhuman acts of strength to save their own lives or the lives of loved ones? How they flip over pickup trucks to free someone underneath or, like, claw their way to the top of a canyon on two broken arms and with an ice pick hanging from their eye socket? This was nothing like that. But, through some freak force of the the universe that I dare not question I was suddenly able to type faster than a lightning bolt and managed to navigate my way through the steps of system restoration and click OK a mere half-nanosecond before Satan smiled. I held my breath. My mom, with my brother still on the phone, held her breath, too. Satan grinned for one second. Then another second. And then his gleaming evil teeth could ward off the power of good no longer, and a screen popped up saying that System Restore was initializing. Satan was no match for my typing skills.
But my glee was short-lived. "Michael wants to know which System Restore point you used," my mom said. Damn. I'd gone so fast that I hadn't had time to select one. The god of the Underworld had no patience for free-will. For all I knew I had just okayed the restoration of my mom's computer to 15 seconds after the FBI notice.
We waited. Then we waited some more. When that was done, we kept waiting. My mom had taken a seat on the couch and was knitting a scarf. I picked up my book and "read" about three lines before realizing that the only thing going through my head was, "I wonder what food they'll serve my mom in prison." After all, though I had selected the virus-laden website, it was my mom whose pottery photos the FBI currently had on file.
After an hour and a half of waiting for System Restore to initialize, I walked into the study for easily the 31st time and saw that the computer was restarting. I entered the password, the icons loaded onto the desktop, and I held my breath. Where are you, Satan? I almost asked, but thought it best not to bait Hell's minion. I waited another minute. Still no Satan. "Mom!" I shrieked. "I did it! It worked! You don't have to go to prison! Satan's grin has been vanquished!" (Let this be a testimony to the relationship I have with my mother that when I exclaimed this last part she didn't even bat an eye.)
There was much rejoicing. I opened the blinds and announced to the FBI, whom I assumed had surrounded the house, that they could call off the stakeout. My mom texted my brother the following picture with the caption, "Your sister typing faster than the speed of a virus!"
"I need a glass of wine," my mom said.
I nodded. Then I remembered that I'd left the TV on and headed for the stairs. "Sorry I interrupted your show," my mom said. "You were probably getting some valuable cooking tips from Chef Amanda Freitag."
"No," I answered. "If Chef Amanda Freitag had been on I wouldn't have even come down."
And that's the story of how I almost got my mom arrested and then saved her from a life behind bars, all in a matter of two hours
Follow-up:
In the days since the Satan's Grin incident there has been no end to the FBI jokes in our house.
1. My mom informed me that the government had called and was looking to employ my masterful typing skills. I agreed, with the stipulation that I receive my own crime drama series on the USA network and that my character's code name be Flying Fingers McGee.
2. My mom and I went to see The Book of Mormon last night and while we were gone my brother had shown up at an empty house just as several people climbed back into their cars, which were parked at the end of our driveway. At first I blamed the Mormons (as I do), but my mom knew the truth: it was the FBI. No question.
BAHAHAHAHHAA. Only you, Olivia Margoshes. Only you.
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