Frankenstein Lives!

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is OH SO PROUD of herself. Perhaps she has mentioned that she is technology-challenged. So when the stroke of 8:00 a.m. rolled around, she was wishing she had the #1 son as a captive copy-clerk intern. Then she could tell him he would have 10 free minutes of his very own time before the bell, if he would only unhook her DVD player and hook up her VCR. Not to a TV, you silly geese! The appliances that are tethered to a sound booster dealy-bobber and spliced into the dock thingamajig that flashes the contents of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's school district laptop via a projector mounted on the ceiling onto the giant movie screen over the whiteboard for all to admire.

But the boy was not a captive. He only makes an appearance when he wants money, or when a last-minute permission slip must be signed. Mrs. HM took a deep breath. She peered at the backsides of various black, beknobbed, sliding-orificed contraptions resting in a nest of coiled wires on the table beside her desk. She observed yellow and white and red connections. But the VCR only had yellow and white posty-looking doomaflojets. Two of each. Much like MacGyver defusing a bomb, or a septuagenarian trying to trounce her great-great-grandchildren in a game of Operation, Mrs. HM removed a yellow and a white whatchamacallit and gingerly poked them into the north end of the south-facing VCR. She turned on the projector, the sound box, the VCR, and pressed a VIDEO button on the projector remote. Holding her deep breath, she pressed the PLAY button on the VCR.

VOILA! A shaft of light surely shone down from above, illuminating the VCR in a golden glow. On the giant classroom movie screen appeared colorful vertical bars. A screeching squeal pierced Mrs. HM's eardrums. Music to her ears, it was...that diabolical test pattern.

All the planets had aligned, the biorhythms had peaked, and had she attempted it, Mrs. HM could no doubt have stood an egg on end. She had cracked the technology code, by cracky! Frankenstein lives!

The true test remains. For one day, in the hopefully distant future, Mrs. HM will have to reconnect the DVD player.