The new computer was still in boxes because dad, a dial-up guy in a broadband world, wasn’t about to try to connect the green plug to the green jack, or figure out what the hell a USB was, never mind where it goes.

The first thing to be done was to clean the hard drive of his old computer, something I would eventually do with a screwdriver and a hammer (with no apologies to the charity destined to get this relic, purchased in an age when Compaq wasn’t Latin for “piece of crap”).

As I looked at the screen, I was amazed at the number of icons that obscured the Compaq logo. Nearly every pixel was occupied by a launch button for various programs, most of which likely had never been clicked.

“Wow, this is a mess,” I said to dad. “The first thing we’re going to have to do is clear off this desktop.”

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I can get a little messy.”

He reached for a small pile of bills lying next to the keyboard. “I’ll take these and if you hand me those papers over there, we’ll have this cleaned up in no time.”

This is why my father waited two months for me to visit before opening his new computer. Wise decision.