How A New Printer With A Scanner Is Just Like Ballroom Dancing Elita Sohmer Clayman

I write a lot about ballroom dancing and how it was when I was a kid in the 1940’s and a teen in 1947, when I worked in the library when I was about thirteen, when I worked at Stewarts Department store in 1950 and had a regular job in 1952-1960, about our family of four, me, mom, dad and brother. I write on Mom’s relatives and Dad’s relatives and my dancing pals. I write about my aching right knee, taking physical therapy, my grandchildren and comment on lots of other things too.

Today my physical therapist Cheryl Conrad said I should write about how I got the new printer written about in my last article called An Ode to My Two Best Friends, My Computer and My Printer, to finally after two days to scan. Scan is a nice feature of a printer. It lets you put a picture large or small in the printer top, press the scan button and then it scans to somewhere you want to save it. In my former printer, it just did it. Of course, that one was a cheaper one; this one is a high class one and therefore has lots of press on glass or plastic words for you to do different things. So I pressed scan and up popped a few more features and finally I convinced it to scan it to my computer which then asked me where on the computer I wanted it. Then I chose one thing and voila it scanned it and I felt so proud and smart.

Then when I wanted to open the scan up, it kindly informed me that ‘selected document could not be found.’ Wow, where did it disappear to? Did it go to computer heaven, did it go to my friend’s computer by mistake, did it dissolve and disappear or did it just play with my feelings and made me think it had scanned. I worked around it and scanned about six different pictures and lo and behold, it repeated itself and said selected document etc. The instruction book must have been printed in Mars or Spain, because there was not one word about this phrase in it. Actually, the instruction book is not really an instruction book.  You have to go on the printer screen and it will tell you to do this or that. When you do this, it does not help, when you do that it again tells you selected document is not here.

So I called Office Depot and spoke to the manager Scott and he said I have to use Adobe to save it. He said do I know what Adobe is and I said sure, I have it already and from it I read two online magazines every Friday that costs me about sixty cents to read whereas if I got a subscription in the mail with these magazines, it would cost me about four dollars for each copy. So I am saving lots of paper to be recycled and lots of money per year, I figure about one hundred seventy-five dollars each year and lots of less garbage. So that is how I bring it up with Adobe. He told me to download a specific word on Adobe and then, I could save the scan picture to Adobe and I would be able to have it and bring it up and send it to others etc.

So I did and lo and behold, he is a smart manager at Office Depot and I am a smart computer maven (expert, especially for being seventy-eight years old) and I solved my problem which was driving me nuts all weekend. First I thought, we will return the darn old new expensive printer and we would show Office Depot, that we would not allow a HP printer make an old lady crazy with scanning. Then I figured it was too hard to schlep (drag the heavy box) back with an old senior (my husband) having to drag it down the side steps outside into the car and into Office Depot. Then I decided, the heck with the scanner, I will live without it since the printer itself is quite competent and it was all plugged in after about ninety minutes of hectic figuring the plug system out. HP neglected to give us poor printer buyers of their printer a USB wire, though they were kind enough to write it in large letters on the box it came in. The store did not tell me to buy one, nor the instructions, nor the CD disc. They were all neglectful in informing everyone and especially old seniors, that you needed one. How was I to know without being informed? I emailed my son who lives out of state and he said plug the goofy plug ending on the wire that came with it into the phone outlet and the other plugs in the computer which we knew to do. The goofy looking one that went into the phone outlet was a phone outlet ending piece and with the other printers, we did not have to plug it into the outlet. The reason being now it was needed because this new one had a fax machine on it and even though the old one did too, it was not mandatory to do that. This newer one made you abide by the fact that there was a fax on it and I have my own separate fax machine and do not need this part. The printer was not informed by me that I already have a viable fax machine in the next room which works quite adequately and we need not get rid of it, because it does a good job. Age should not be considered, when a good machine remains a good machine. You need not throw out a good fax machine, because a new feature on your new printer also has a fax.

So I told my husband, try harder to get the other plug that was not going into the printer and he did and there it was all plugged in and the printer was working and did not need to lose its nice home with me and go back in a lonely box to Office Depot awaiting a new owner. The new owner might not be as sweet as me or perhaps would not dust it off every other day or might feed it with cheap printing paper. So the printer was quite fortunate in being able to find in me a friend who decided not to give up on him or her and letting him or her still be a printer in my lovely home. The printer saw that I persevered and did not dump him at the first sign of not being so receptive to our plugging in problems.

I was so proud of me for continuing on to solve the plug problems and I told this to my physical therapist as she was using the ultrasound machine and the gel that makes it work, on my aching right knee. She said I should tell others about my tenacious spirit of persevering and continuing to make it work.

Ben Franklin said “perseverance is the mother of good luck. “Also in the Thesaurus, it says persevere means plugging in. Therefore, to persevere and to plug in every plug you see on the printer is what is another meaning to the word.

Usually I interject something about ballroom dancing into most of my articles I write. Why? I do it because I want to encourage everyone to dance, regardless of age, so here goes. Perhaps, you could say ballroom dancing is kind of like buying a new printer. The printer needs in its booklet to clarify terms, in dancing we get made clear to us dancers the terminology of certain dance words, with the printer everything has to be plugged in, in dancing we have to plug our mind and feet into what we are doing, in the printer we have to be clearly told how to scan, print, copy and send, in dancing we have to be told how to stand, think, do and plan.

So I presume you will not think me silly when I say dancing is like a printer. The printer prints off the glory of the thing being printed or scanned or copied. The dancer gives off the glory of being alive, moving, excelling and even copied by other dancers who think he or she is dancing well.

The printer copies, other people copy the dancer, the printer moves the scanned thing to the saving area, the dancer moves all around the room while dancing in what in dance terms is called the line of dance, the printer prints beautiful sheets of colored words, the dancer shows beautiful moves of his or her body and lastly, the printer gives happiness when one sees the finished picture copied or scanned and the dancer give joy to himself for his or her accomplishments and that too is a complete picture.

Dancing and Printers are sisters with their underlying purpose. So there you have ballroom dancing equated to printing; however, dancing does really in the beginning days, drive you into feeling you are inadequate, as the printer does, and dancing really makes you feel quite competent, after you have digested all its terms and movements and if the printer could feel things, it would feel competent in giving you the scan, you tried hard to do.

You have a chance in dancing to compete if you want to, to wear lovely dresses if a woman and most of all to have a partner holding you close. The printer sits on the desk or counter, all alone, waiting for the mistress of the room to make him or her to be useful. One thing the printer and ballroom dancing do have in common; they both know Elita Sohmer Clayman and both of them had stories written about them in the Patch. Do not feel sorry for the printer, it is still getting some respect and notoriety and that is still real nice.

Two final comments, Cheryl said I should write about all this to show everyone, especially seniors now called by me as active adults (AA), that seniors can persevere and accomplish not only ballroom dancing, but how to get a printer to work. Also, maybe, I can get a job for Hewlett Packard and show them how a real writer could write their instruction book better than who is doing it now. I even could probably write it in French, because it comes in French too. Perhaps, the French person who wrote the instructions wrote them clearer than the English writer.

So ballroom dancing and buying a new printer do surely have lots in common. Both can make a person feel very inadequate when first learning it and then one feels great for the thrill of having conquered it and its complicated happenings. Ben Franklin said perseverance is the mother of good luck.

I love dancing and I love my new printer. I am a mother with good luck!