We were at a store that sells vintage electronics (read: old stuff that Emily has me keep in the basement) and Zac discovered a laptop computer.  This is perfect! he exclaimed. I agreed.  At $2, it couldn’t get much better.  I also found an old Michigan Bell phone, beige, with warning stickers: BELL PROPERTY – NOT FOR SALE.  I bought it for $1.  Zac’s laptop, a Toshiba T4500, was originally designed during the Eisenhower Administration.  The model number – T4500 – was likely chosen because of its incredible weight of nearly 4,500 tons.

It was a good day  Then the day got better.

Zac sat in the back of the truck with his new laptop and vintage Bell phone and became Tony Stark / Ironman.  This transition was aided by the wearing of his Ironman sunglasses.  By default, I became Tony’s driver.  The phone calls to Tony were constant and required feverish typing on the laptop.  It’s a good thing I was driving.  He and I maintained this scheme for the better part of an hour.

But then… the day got better.

We stopped at Bob Evan’s, where kids eat for cheap/free on Tuesdays.  A meal couldn’t stop Tony, though.  He needed to keep his sunglasses on and carry his laptop into the restaurant so that he could keep working while we ate.

A conundrum.

Imagined from the hostess’s point of view, a large scary man is rapidly approaching the restaurant entrance.  His cohort, a small, visually impaired terrorist, is carrying a large beige case full of advanced electronic equipment likely meant to do something terrible.

I figured I’d grab my laptop, too — just to make us look less dangerous.  Perhaps people thought Zac’s laptop was my dot matrix printer.  We ordered.  Then we worked on our laptops.  Adam and Tony Stark.  While I was starting this blog post, Tony was saving the world.

It was nice to get something done.  The food came and went, and so did we.

Tony fell asleep on the way home, but only for a few minutes.  Thankfully, the phone stayed silent as he rested.