There is a saying in Venezuela which I have always felt identified deeply with the things that happen in my life.
“A mí, y al Pato Lucas” or “To me and Daffy Duck”.
The meaning behind this old and wise saying is that some of us have that weird luck of random things happening to us that would otherwise only happen to a cartoon character.
For the last year and a half I have been struggling with a nerve injury around my hip. I have gone to orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors and physiotherapists to try and sort this injury out (isn’t even an injury if it started without pain and just appeared?). What began as me not being able to walk on my right leg, slowly started shifting onto my buttock, with my right leg getting numb if I sat for too long. I’m constantly shifting positions when sitting, I can’t sit on our couch ‘cause it hurts me and sleeping has made me become a flopping fish. Eventually the chiro and physio where actually the most helpful, with the orthopedic doctor only pointing out other things I didn’t know where wrong and basically telling me to walk more. After many hours of trying to figure out what was wrong and seeing stars when people press down on the right spot to “release” that nerve, the pain has now moved to my left side. I’ve gone through a whole lot of shifting of bones, trapped nerves and facing “unresolved emotional triggers” that apparently as women we carry on our hips, particular on our left sciatica nerve (some stuff I found online was accurately scary).
It’s been a whole lot better but some days, when the wind blows the wrong way, I find myself cursing my hip. The running joke is that I need to be returned to the store where I was bought because I turned out to be a faulty model.
One morning, after a really bad sleep and walking like an injured bird, I walked as a zombie practicing my morning routine. Turn kettle on to boil water for French press coffee, open the living room’s sliding door to let some of the Hoedspruit heat out of the house while avoiding the laundry and other mess inside. Once caffeine hit my brain and soothed my hip I went back inside and found this note on the floor.
I have known creepy people, I’ve had really strange things happen to me but, I’ve believed in ghosts and yet, this was simply too much.
Whatever it was or whoever it was, it was listening, but to what? The note was on the floor, next to printer. I was home alone the previous night and wasn’t really on the phone to anyone so there was no conversation to listen to. The note wasn’t there when I went to sleep. The wording and spelling wasn’t grammatically correct and no hopeful google search produced such an automated answer from an HP Deskjet printer.
Someone had made my printer print that. Was it maybe the The Killer that had found my house after all this time?
Tayla went into panic. Tristan went on “don’t worry mode”. Gerry went on mom mode and started tracking my phone. Brent was on machete alert should I phone in the middle of the night. The Napiers adopted me over the weekend.
We all hoped it would have been Dylan as he’s one of the techy ones, but alas he swore it wasn’t him. The tech investigation then began and revealed that a while back, when having to print half a book of paperwork for a visa renewal, I had put my printer on “the network”. Apparently these networks are easy to hack, giving people the opportunity to get into your printer and do creepy things like producing ulcer-giving messages on someone else’s machine.
I disconnected the printer from the network and two days later worked up the courage to plug it back in to see if it had anything else to say. Although I was met with beautiful, peace-giving silence from my machine, for a whole month I slept locked inside my room with the biggest knife on my night stand.
If you are reading this and thought this was a funny prank, it really wasn’t. If you sent the message, you need to check your grammar. If you’re the ghost that lives in my house, please don’t eavesdrop and then tell me – I thought you had left.
My printer now lives unplugged, no one needs that level of AI.
Truly, “Daffy Duck and I”.
