Friday 7 October 2011

Colourless Daddy


Thunderchild walks into the bedroom, hanging her shoulders and head so that the hair covers her face.

“What’s wrong?” asks her mother.

“My daddy is colourless”, she replies.

…wavy lines…screen blurs…scroll back a few hours.

15h51.  TC calls me at work.

“Daddy, is your email still x@y.z?”  “Yes, or you could use me work email…Why?”  

“I need you to print something for me, please.  But I need 5 copies.”  “OK, sure.  Send it” I reply.

“OK, just wait.  Wait. Wait.  It’s on its way”, she informs me.

“Where did you send it to?”
“You work email”
“OK, got it.  I’ll print it and bring it home.  See you just now. Bye”

I open the document and click “Print”.  It prints one copy and I make 4 photostats of it (she said she wanted 5!).  Put on the desk so that I don’t forget it when I leave the office (I have a tendency to forget documents at work when I go home…).

Get home a short while later and TC comes running down the stairs to greet me.  I know what’s coming.  She goes to the other side of the lounge and waits for me to get ready.  I strike the pose – it’s very similar to the inside center waiting for the fly-half to pass the ball in rugby – I’ve been catching her like ever since she was a “certain” height.  She comes running at me, jumps and I have to catch her.  I’ve learnt by now not to try and catch her straight on as she’ll flatten me.  Just catch her from the side and swing – that works.

“Did you bring my documents?”

“Yes”

“All five copies?”

“Yes”
She eagerly takes a look at the documents to see how they came out.

“They’re colourless.”

You see, the default printer setting at work is to print in greyscale, not colour.  Somehow the colour thing did not get through to me. 

… wavy lines … forward a few a few hours

And that is why I was referred to as “Colourless Dad” for most of Thursday evening.  Later on she revised the document, put it down on my PC and told me to print it in colour for her.  I’ll do that just after this post.

She didn’t say I must print 5 copies, did she?

1 comment:

  1. TC’s mother just needs to explain WHY the printing should have been done in colour:

    The document is TC’s script for a play they had to write for school. They had to create a myth around the origin of any company in the world’s logo and write the myth as a play. Thus, TC wrote the script in a different colour font for each of the actors.

    As I said to her at the time: “Men just do not get such things.” But then, this is a small thing compared to the extent of TC’s daddy’s love for her!

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