Just one tiny click and then a black screen reflected Harry's horrified face. His laptop died at 2:13 on a Thursday afternoon forty-seven minutes before a deadline that was supposed to cover his rent.
“Arggh!” He yelled and said several things to the laptop in ascending order, most of which he had learned from failed deadlines in the office and none of which belonged anywhere near an eight-year-old.
His nephew, Sunny, sat on the sofa beside him with his tablet and a bowl of cereal, his mouth hanging open in surprise, a clump of cereal stuck to the corner of his mouth.
Harry paused, realising what he had done. He sighed in frustration and rubbed his face. His sister Priya had asked him to babysit for a few hours while she attended a job interview and he seemed to be doing a terrible job of it.
“That was a bad word,” Sunny said, the clump falling onto his shirt, “and the second one was worse.”
Harry sighed again. “Sorry buddy. Uncle Harry is having a moment.” He kept jabbing the power button as though that was a form of repair or that the device would magically power on.
“Mommy says swearing isn't big or clever,” Sunny recited, trying to mimic his mother's soft voice while wagging his index finger at him.
Harry stopped jabbing and gazed at his nephew with interest. His situation was annoying but the boy had a point, he thought. Underneath his anger at the laptop was something familiar which was the fear that his client had already granted him an extension and he was one unlucky afternoon away from being a person who could not be relied upon. He hated that.
He sat down on the carpet and put his head against the coffee table and for a moment, the flat was quiet except for the crunch of cereal.
“Uncle Harry?” Sunny said in the small voice of someone about to confess to something. “Is it dead because I unplugged it?”
Harry lifted his head very slowly, his eyes following the line of the charging cable. It was lying limp on the floor, its end nowhere near the wall socket while Sunny's tablet sat contentedly plugged into the socket.
Sunny shrugged. “Mommy says to charge it when the battery is half way.” He pointed at his screen, “it's halfway now.”
Harry laughed so suddenly that he startled both himself and his nephew, a ragged laugh that went on long enough for Sunny to start giggling too.
He ruffled his nephew's hair and swapped the cables. “Thanks, buddy. Give me fifteen minutes and you can restart charging your tablet, yea?”
“Okay, Uncle.”
Then he worked with the fierce, narrow focus of a man being timed. At 2:58, he sent the files along with a short email admitting that the last page was rougher than he wanted and offering to polish it by morning.
His client replies within minutes saying the rough was fine and the work looked great. Harry smiled from ear to ear until his sister came home and Sunny greeted her with the news that Uncle Harry had said two bad words.
Harry winced and gave her a sheepish smile.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "swearing isn't big or clever…”.
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