Is Digital Hoarding a Thing?

Big numbers, it seems to me, scare my wife.

I’ve had no computer for three days, because the damn thing wouldn’t open beyond the loading bar.

“Didn’t I say you’d clog it up?” Tracey chastised me. “You had too much crap on your desktop.”

“Had,” I said. “I cleaned it up a couple of weeks ago.”

I did too. Deleted heaps and chucked more heaps into documents.

Tracey slapped me so hard with one of her ‘looks’ I was thrown out of my chair and she sat in from of my screen.

“Last night it kept closing while in was editing in iMovie,” I told her while staring over her shoulder. Every fifteen minutes the damn thing would inform me it felt like a nap and was no longer taking instructions. There was very much a Seinfeld ‘No soup for you!’ vibe to it. “I thought I’d run out of memory so I started deleting the biggest files I could find.”

Tracey’s fingers immediately stopped tap dancing across the keys.

She spun to stare at me. Not just her neck either. She swivelled the entire chair 90% to face me full on.

Watch your step, I warned myself. You are definitely in the crosshairs here.

I could tell my wife wanted to say the next words slowly & menacingly, but I could also tell she was so worried about my answer, and possibly the idea of having to dig a Bruce sized hole by moonlight in a shale filled backyard, she couldn’t help but blurt her concerns at me.

“You better not have deleted any video of the kids…”

“Of course not,” I interjected quickly to put her mind at ease.

I’m not silly.

I’d never admit to that.

Three hours later Tracey messaged me how after considerable Googling she’d somehow managed to get my computer running again.

I was in bed.

I hadn’t gone to sleep – I’m not a complete ass – but Tracey had suggested I leave the studio (“piss off”) so she could concentrate, so I was catching up on the latest plot twist in the reality drama, America.

The exchange went as follows:

I mentally patted myself on the back.

It was only after I pressed send I realised a few !!! might have been implied in her comment.

Wait..is that a lot? I messaged back.

I am unable to reprint her response.

So the fantastic news is my computer is working again, although given her illogical reactions to numbers triple digit and over I do have some concerns going forward.

As in I hope she never notices the unread emails I’ve been collecting on my phone since she snapped at me to clear them a year ago.

Raising a family on little more than laughs