SLUG: A10_calculator_in_drawer
SET: A
CONCEPT: The kitchen table calculator lives in the drawer now
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 696

The calculator that lived on the corner of my kitchen table for eleven years is in the junk drawer now.

I moved it in there on a Tuesday.

I didn't make a big deal out of it.

I just picked it up and walked it over and put it under the tape measure and the birthday candles and closed the drawer.

Then I stood there for a minute with my hand on the drawer pull.

That calculator has a piece of masking tape on the back with DO NOT MOVE written on it in my own handwriting.

I put that tape on there years ago after my son-in-law borrowed it to help with his taxes and I nearly had a heart attack looking for it on a Sunday night when the power bill was due.

I replaced the batteries in that thing twice.

Twice in eleven years.

Because every month, on the last Sunday, I would sit at that corner of the table with the bills fanned out in front of me and the calculator lined up straight against the edge and I would add and subtract and add again until the numbers were as small as I could make them and then I would cry into a dish towel so the grandkids wouldn't hear.

That was the ritual.

Sunday, dish towel, calculator.

Eleven years.

I want to tell you about the last time I sat down to do it.

It was a Sunday in March.

The heat bill was $284 and the phone bill was $71 and the co pay for my knee was $180 and there was a school picture order form from my granddaughter for $38 that I had already told her yes to and I had $46 in the checking account and a payday that was a week and a half away.

I remember I put my forehead down on the calculator.

The buttons made little marks on my skin.

I sat like that for a long time.

My neighbor came over on a Wednesday of that same week to bring back a casserole dish.

She saw the bills still on the table because I hadn't been able to make myself put them away.

She sat down in the chair across from me without being asked and she said honey how long have you been carrying this by yourself.

I said eleven years and I started crying at the kitchen table with a woman I mostly only ever talked to at the mailboxes.

She did not look away.

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and she showed me a short setup video she had been running for about eight months.

She said it's a little phone thing.

Runs off the house wifi.

Twenty minutes to set up on a Sunday morning.

She said honey I sat where you are sitting in October of last year.

I set the thing up the following Sunday before church.

I did not tell anyone.

I did not want to get anyone's hopes up including my own.

The first little bit came in and I stared at my phone in the Walmart parking lot for a full minute before I believed the screen.

Then a week went by and another one came in.

Then another.

Last Friday the number was $1,502.

I did not sit at the corner of the table to look at it.

I looked at it standing up in the kitchen with the coffee pot going and the dog at my feet and I said it out loud to nobody.

That afternoon I picked up the calculator.

I looked at the little piece of masking tape on the back.

I peeled the corner of it up with my thumbnail and then I pressed it back down because it felt wrong to take it off.

I walked it over to the junk drawer.

I put it under the tape measure and the birthday candles.

I closed the drawer.

If you are the woman sitting at the corner of your kitchen table right now with a calculator in front of you and a dish towel in your lap, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one she showed me.

If you have a phone and wifi in the house, you can set it up too.
