I have a confession to make. Dad: I’m sorry I let the rooster shit in your keyboard.
OK, so let me explain. Mum and Dad had to leave the house for some reason or another. Birdie, as we used to call him, was relatively little. We knew he was a rooster by that stage – mostly a personality thing – but he was also pretty docile. His mother hen had been sadly taken by a fox a little while ago, so my brother and I looked after him on a regular basis so he had some company.
Sometimes, that meant he just chilled in the house with us. That was fairly normal at the time – the ducks, chooks and sometimes other birds would generally wander in every morning and eat all the cat’s food, which she graciously put up with on a regular basis. But occasionally, while the rest of the feathered family would wander back out the door after breakfast, we’d keep the rooster around.
So one day, I’m sitting there playing a game on the PC. It’s the mid-afternoon, and Birdie’s sitting there, chilling on my lap.
Then something changes on the screen. It’s a cutscene, although I can’t remember for what game. But for whatever reason, he took a particular interest in this one. So he hopped up on the table, and got closer to the screen.
And by getting closer to the screen, I mean walking straight onto the keyboard. Fine, I thought, he’s not going to do any damage.
Until a small, sloppy rooster shit drops straight in between the F and V keys.
In a panic, I unplugged the keyboard and rushed to a garden near the back door. I turned the keyboard over, and hurriedly kept hitting the back of the keyboard until every last … drop … had come out. I then found some paper towels and tried catch as much in between the keys as I could, because I knew what my Dad’s reaction would be.
And because I’m a dumb arse kid, obviously I plugged the keyboard in and kept using it.
And never told Dad.
Ever.
I’m pretty sure the keyboard is still in his shed. And we used it for a solid few years after that.
So, technically, that keyboard isn’t “ruined”. Unless you have any small inkling towards hygiene, in which case the keyboard should probably be killed with fire and shot into space. I’m certainly not using it now. I know what happened.
But what about yourselves … what ways have you found to ruin a piece of tech?
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