I’ll take the Ipad, the case, the protection plan, and 25 Xanax, please.

When you do a triathlon, they have these people there called swim angels.

They are there for the participants who are nervous about the swim portion of the race.

They swim right next to you, and keep you company.

They calm you down.

They help you.

I was thinking about them yesterday.

When I was in Best Buy.

Best Buy needs some technology angels.

I am not completely technologically illiterate.

But trying to keep up with the technological advances is, for me, much more tiring than trying to keep up with a two-year-old.

Or a three-year-old.

Or a two-year-old and a three-year-old.

Forget air brushing.

And mean girls.

If you want a swift kick in the self-esteem, walk into Best Buy and ask a simple question.

Or try to answer one.

Like, Can I help you?

Walking into Best Buy,

for me,

is like walking into Greece.

I’m pretty sure that Ipad is the same in both Greek and BestBuynese.

After that, forget it.

I pretty much had to resort to sign language, grunting, and tears.

“I think I want an Ipad,” I told the salesboy who hesitantly approached me. “Or a laptop. I don’t know. I don’t really even know where to start or what questions to ask.”

“How much memory do you need?” the kid asked me.

“I don’t know, “I told him. “Like 10 hours?”

He smiled.

Uncomfortably.

He was going to really have to earn his money with me.

“No, how many gigs? ” he asked. “You can get 16, or 32, or 64 or…”

“Um, I’m really sorry, but I have no idea what the hell a gig even is,” I told him.

“Can you convert gigs to hours? I need to make some videos, and I want to be able to edit them and store them,” I told him.

He exhaled, slumped his shoulders, dropped his head, and took me over to the Ipads.

Then he confronted me with the options.

The gigs.

The memory.

The plans.

Ugh.

The plans. 

“Well, you could get this package. Or this one. Or this one,” he told me.

I was starting to sweat, but I hadn’t showered in two days and I really didn’t want to take my hat off.

I picked what I thought was the most cost effective one.

And then he told me he’d be right back.

“Okay, there’s a little problem,” he told me when he came back. “We don’t have that one…

But we do have this one, which I didn’t even think of…

You’ve heard of the hot spot, right?” he asked me.

Whoa.

What?

I was not prepared for a sex talk with the 14-year-old pop tart from Best Buy.

“I think the hot spot I’ve heard of is different than the one you are talking about,” I told him.

He didn’t really laugh.

But now he was starting to sweat too.

Good. At least now we were both uncomfortable.

He took me over to some more crap that I’d never seen before.

At this point Charlie Brown’s teacher may as well have been talking to me.

I think I might have heard the word server or router or something else that ended in -er.

“Do I have to plug that shit in?” I asked him?

All I could think of was the back of my computer, which is one cord away from being a major fire hazard.

“No,” he said. “It’s wireless.”

“Great,” I said. “Does it come with a locator?” I asked. “Because it will take less than 2 days to lose that thing.”

Eventually we made it to the register.

He started typing like crazy.

He paused and looked up at me.

“Do you have an Apple ID?” he asked.

I didn’t know there would be a test before I could make my purchase.

“Hmmmm…. Yes?” I said.

 “No?

Honestly, I have no freaking idea,” I told him.

He sighed. Heavily.

“I’ll just make you a new one,” he said, completely defeated.

“Um, I have an Ipod,” I told him. “Does that mean I have an Apple ID?”

“Yes!” He perked up.

And then he slumped again.

“But you have to know the password,” he said.

I have more proof that miracles are real.

I knew the password.

Thank God.

It breathed life into the  prepubescent salesboy.

He couldn’t finish up fast enough.

And I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

I walked out of that place sweaty, shaking, mumbling to myself and in need of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Forget the technology angel.

The next time I go to Best Buy, I think I’ll bring a therapist with me.