Today I entered into the sweet sanctum of success via a battle of wits between yours truly and a 300-lb. copy machine. It was close, and could possibly be subject to interpretation, but I'm calling it a win for me.
In an effort to get out of my house and escape at least 30 minutes of football fanfare (it's a fantasy!), I went to school to make some copies for Monday. Things started pretty much as they usually do--paper in, 2-sided, press the start button--but quickly took a turn for the worst when the copier said it had made six copies and I had yet to see any. This started a familiar dance we like to do where I find all the crumpled ones, turn all the levers, close all the doors, start over, repeat. We danced like this for a while before I inevitably gave up and wrote a witty note which I taped to the top of the clearly inoperable machine.
I walked down to the staff lounge (where I came across one lonely lemon bar left over from Friday's lunch treats--destiny, you ask? I like to think so), sat down for a minute (long enough to alleviate any long-term abandonment issues that lemon bar would have inevitably suffered from), and tried to decide whether I should go to a different building to make the copies. One more try, I thought, as I gathered any and everything that could possibly aid me in my quest toward mechanical-ism.
Armed with two forks, a plastic pair of tongs, and an extra-large paper clip, I returned to the scene of the accident. I pulled out all the drawers for at least the eighth time, and realized there was a section I had missed in my many cleanings. Right there, in a tiny corner of the machine, lay 8-20 pieces of accordion-crinkled paper. It was like a literary-analysis-themed Japanese fan shop in there. One where they set the fans on fire and dance around with them. Which is what I undoubtedly looked like as I attempted to remove them all from places in this copier where surely no human limb had gone before.
The end result? 150 beautifully copied Literary Analysis Workshop #1 packets. And I managed to employ each and every one of the tools I had gathered on my odyssey. Although, I will admit, they won't all be returning home to their loved ones...
