SLUG: B03_device_at_door
SET: B
CONCEPT: It arrived in a small envelope three days later
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 612

It showed up at the door on a Tuesday afternoon in a small padded envelope no bigger than a paperback book.

Linda didn't tell anyone she had ordered it.

She's a widow, 62, lives two streets over from me, does the flowers at church on Sundays.

Her son had passed the winter before and she'd been living off social security and whatever her daughter in law could spare.

She told me later she almost didn't open the envelope.

The device was about the size of a USB stick.

That was it.

No big manual, no instructions in six languages, no plastic wrap that takes a knife to get through.

Just the little thing and a folded card with a setup video link on it.

She plugged it into the back of her wifi router next to the TV.

The whole thing took less time than a microwave dinner.

Twenty minutes on a Sunday afternoon between the two services.

Then she forgot about it.

I mean honestly forgot.

Her granddaughter came to visit that week.

The washing machine started making the noise washing machines make right before they die.

She had to bring a casserole to a funeral on Friday.

She did not look at the app for almost eleven days.

When she finally opened it, the first number sitting there was $146.

She told me she stared at it for two full minutes.

Then she closed the app.

Then she opened it again to make sure she had not imagined it.

$146 for a little thing she had plugged into the wall and walked away from.

Two weeks after that the number said $1,502.

That is when she sat down at her kitchen table and cried.

Not because it was a lot of money to some people.

But because she remembered where she had been in March.

She told me that story sitting across from me at the coffee shop in town, both hands wrapped around a cup, still shaking a little from telling it.

And I want to be honest with you.

I went home that afternoon and ordered one for myself.

I had been sitting in the Walmart parking lot two weeks earlier with a receipt for Emma's cough medicine and a cart I had to put half of back because I only had $47 in the checking account.

I sat in the car crying so hard the woman parked next to me got out.

She knocked on my window and I rolled it down because I did not have the strength to pretend anymore.

She said honey whatever it is you are carrying, you do not have to carry it in a parking lot by yourself.

I remembered that when Linda finished her story.

So I ordered one.

Mine came three days later in the same kind of small padded envelope.

I set it up on a Sunday morning before church.

I plugged the little thing into the wifi router behind the TV and walked away.

The device is not fancy.

It does not look like anything.

It is smaller than the remote control.

You plug it into the wifi router and you walk away from it.

That is the whole thing.

If you are the person sitting in a parking lot right now with a receipt in your lap and a cart you had to put half of back, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one Linda watched.

Same little envelope that will show up at your door three days later.

Make sure you tell somebody else too, if they have a phone and wifi they can do it too.
