I CAN'T PLAY

my game on Facebook!" I complained to the geek (at the Best Buy store) who was faking a concerned look. "I'm addicted to the game.  It's my every day fix, my crack cocaine!" 

Then I added, just for clarification,  " I need to play Words with Friends!"

"Uh, I don't even know what that is," the guy said.

"It's like Scrabble," I explained, though I was well aware he probably didn't have a clue about that old board game, either.

I tried to pull up Words with Friends on my laptop, just to show him how the game refused to operate.  It refused to operate.

He fiddled with the laptop a while, erased all its settings and restarted it, continued to puzzle over it.  Finally he took my laptop and disappeared into the back room with it.

I pulled out the paperback book I had carried along expressly for the purpose of whiling away time, Why Does the World Exist?  

Strange that I'm reading this, I mused.  I already know it exists in order to drive me crazy!  But I opened to page 106,  nonetheless, and immersed myself in this 'existential detective story.'

Now, Reader Dear, let me quote for you the exact phrase I had just finished reading when Geek-guy reappeared with his fellow geek worker:

       

"Later in his philosophical career, Russell decided that the ontological argument was not sound after all.  Still, he observed, 'it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies'."*

I looked up from my book as Geek-guy said to me, "It's easier to feel convinced that there must be a problem, than it is to find out precisely where the problem lies!**

......

*Jim Holt; Liveright Publishing Corporation; 2013
**I confess, Dear Reader, it's not exactly how his response was worded.

 "We can't fix your game apps," one of the geek guys said.  They shoved my laptop across the counter.  "Just call the one-eight-hundred number!"