The Submission that Almost Withered on the Vine

I received an email this morning concerning a submission that I made a while back. I know it came in this morning, because it wasn't there when I checked my phone at 1:30 a.m. as I plugged in the charger. Since I was just going out the door, after dousing The Pony's head with kitchen-sink water, the better to tighten his too-long mane into regular ringlets rather than the stretched-out curls of sleep...I did not take the time to get my glasses and read it. I told The Pony that I would need him to read it to me on the way to school. He was quite agreeable, even though I had just set him up to be a walking icicle when the wind hit his hydrated noggin between house and garage. It's not called a breezeway for nothing, you know.

Shortly after we left gravel and turned onto blacktop, The Pony retrieved my email on my phone. He read it excitedly for me. We are kindred spirits. As he finished, murmuring the last command of how I should peruse the story once more and make final edits and reply, I instructed him to back out of the email program so I didn't accidentally boob-delete it. Okay, I didn't say boob-delete to him. That would be a bit untoward. I merely said I didn't want to accidentally delete it when I dropped my phone into my shirt pocket for the walk from the parking lot into school.

Almost instantly, The Pony shoved my phone onto the center console of the Tahoe. "That was quick! Did you back out of the email?" It's what I do. I just hit that backwards arrow at the bottom of my phone. Not on the screen. On the metal of the phone casing. That's one thing on that contraption that I know how to work.

"Oh, I saved it in the archives."

"WHAT? What is that? I don't want it saved in the archives! I never use that! I want it in my inbox so I can go right to it when I get home."

"Well, it's in the archives."

"Well, GET IT BACK!"

"I can't. I don't know how to get into the archives on your phone."

"Great. Genius won't help me at school, and I can't get reception anyway. And you'll both be gone tonight to your Academic Team match. What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. I didn't do it on purpose. I actually thought it said 'add star,' not 'archives.' I'm so dumb sometimes."

"You are NOT dumb. I'm not mad at you. It was an accident. But there are very few things that are really important to me, and this happens to be one of them. The others being you, your brother, Grandma, and even Dad to a certain extent."

"I'm looking on my Gmail right now. I see where the archives are. But I never put anything in mine."

"Me neither! And I can't access Gmail at school on my computer. It's blocked."

"Uh huh. All email is blocked."

"HEY! Why don't you just open my Gmail right now on your laptop?"

"I never thought of that! Wow! You have 138 spam emails!

"Try to focus."

"There it is, the archives. Move to...IT'S BACK IN THE INBOX! At least on my laptop."

"Um. Yeah. It will be from wherever I open my Gmail. Whew! Between the two of us, we make a regular Einstein."

Pity the poor technological simpletons. We might as well be writing on cave walls with paint made from charcoal, spit, and animal fat. Except for that troubling starting-a-fire-to-make-charcoal skill.