As Time Goes By

I was in Best Buy recently, against all my better judgement, on a Saturday at noon. I was there to assist my parents in selecting a new laptop since after the normal lifespan of laptops (three years)...their's died. I felt badly about their's dying since it was a gift for my Mom's 70th birthday from all us kids. The thought did occur to me that my mom is now 73. Still seems young in my mind the way she carries it.

So I've successfully avoided Best Buy for many years and had vowed not to return because of the repeated poor customer service experiences I had in the store the last few times I had dared to go in. My brother assured me that they were now providing excellent customer service, but I was still very skeptical (a sign of old age?).

But to Best Buy we went and I'm glad that we did. We were just going to window-shop, test out the demo's and then purchase another day, but tke kid helping us (yes, he was a kid - all of 21 - just turned it, in fact) was so knowledgable and helpful and generous and kind that we bought one on the spot. It helped that he was Jordanian so my mom and he had the whole shared Arab heritage going on. What was striking about him was how blue his eyes were (my grandfather eye's were blue like that - really light blue on a 100% Lebanese man). My dad said he looked like that actor - he couldn't recall his name - I immediately said "Paul Newman" and my dad nodded. The kid looked at us blankly. I said, "You've never heard of Paul Newman, have you?" He said, "No." Mind you, he was born and raised here and he works in a Best Buy where six rows over there's a whole section of DVD's with such classics as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I asked him if he had heard of that film. Nope. Well, it seems...I'm getting old.

But we still left with some great technology for my 70+ parents who were very excited about the webcam feature. So, we're still learning new tricks.