My printer was jammed. However, I’m sure what was really going on inside the printer was more complicated than a simple jamming. “Jam,” however is the word most commonly used by people with no technical acumen, and “acumen” is a word I have always wanted to use. It sounds so much better than “wherewithal.” So, there I was – the sun had set hours earlier on another cold, damp day, my printer was jammed, a baby cried, I looked outside my window and in the distance I think I heard Fifel singing, “Somewhere Out There.”

After taking a moment, I just stared at the printer shaking my head disapprovingly. At one point, I began ignoring the printer by doing other things like putting on deodorant. I was sending the printer an “I’m disappointed in you” vibe, and all the printer had the gall to do was to stare back, sending me an “I’m a machine and I have no feelings” vibe.

I tried to remedy the problem by turning the printer off because that’s what normal people do when technology fails them: They turn things off. In my head, I reasoned that if I turned the printer off, it would forget entirely about the mean vibes I had previously sent. When I pressed the button to turn it back on, I did it as if I was caressing the arm of a girl while spooning. Surely the printer would love that. The printer, however, was still jammed. It was also a boy printer, which I didn’t realize until months later when I turned it upside down to beat it with a baseball bat. It was at that point I thought the printer may have had a more serious condition than just jamming. Cancer? How would my printer have gotten cancer? What in my room was causing cancer?!? Either way, I was growing angry because the document I was printing was essential to my livelihood … essential.

Suddenly, like a werewolf, I mounted my desk, took the protective outer covering off of my printer and began taking out all of the jammed paper. I think I may have eaten some raw meat in the process. Then, while I howled at the moon with blood smeared all over my face, my printer did the unthinkable. It started flashing red. It even made a beeping noise that I didn’t know it was capable of making. Though I don’t speak Printer, I had the wherewithal to discontinue my abuse. I realized the printer would be unable to print the document that was essential to my livelihood. Come to think of it, my printer has never been capable of printing. I always hoped that if I ignored the problem long enough, one day I would press print and it would all just “happen.”

So I saved my document on to my disk, which made me smile because I was calling it a “document” sort of like The Declaration of Independence was a document, and I knocked on my roommate’s door. “Does your printer work?” I asked. “God, no,” he responded. For a second I was angry because I was disappointed in his lack of responsibility in getting it fixed. I walked to my other roommate and asked, “Can I use your printer?” He said he’d let me but his ink cartridge was low and he needed to conserve. I explained that it wasn’t that long of a document, hoping that calling it a document would sway him. It had the opposite effect. He shut his door in my face while shouting, “Conserve!” I called all the computer labs and they told me their printers had all gone “haywire” because somebody tried to print their 3,000 page graduation thesis entitled, “Terminator: It Will Happen.” The man on the other end of the call explained that the printers should not have gone “haywire,” but with a giggle he said, “Printers do that sometimes.” I wanted to kill him. At this point I was feeling melancholy, so I wrote a poem.

There was only one logical thing to do: get on a plane, go to Hewlett-Packard headquarters and give Mr. Hewlett-Packard a piece of my mind. It turned out that Hewlett and Packard were two separate people. I learned this from Mr. Hewlett, who allowed me into his office with no problem. Apparently Packard is a real jerk. Mr. Hewlett told me they used to be called Hewlett and Packard, but the name shouted “law firm” and not “printing people.”

I explained to Mr. Hewlett that, though I love his work, his printers were making my life a living hell, which was a statement that totally contradicted itself. I showed him my disk on which I had the document essential to my livelihood, and explained to him the pain I had gone through in trying to print said document. “That pain,” I told Mr. Hewlett, “is caused by you!” Exclamation point!

Mr. Hewlett got out of his seat, took my disk and plopped it into his computer. “What’s the document’s name?” he asked. “Sethman 69” I replied with a look of embarrassment. “My friend, who is 14, thought it would be hilarious,” I added. Smooth cover. Mr. Hewlett pressed print, opened his mouth and my document came streaming out perfectly intact. I was perplexed, but my mission was accomplished.

“Thank you,” I said.

“If you want color, you’re going to have to go find Mr. Packard.”

Seth Reiss, a junior in the

College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press.