Photoessay #2803 - The printer of which we do not speak

In our house we have a "printer of which we don't speak."

This is not the printer in the picture.  The printer in the picture is our old printer.  I think it looks kind of like a battleship.  Dennis and Naomi christened it 'the great stone dragon."  It does not print in color.  We had paper jams all the time.  Dennis was always coming home to printer jams.  I print stuff all the time.  Especially for this archaeology class.  All those long dense articles with tiny print; I have so many, they all don't fit in a binder.  I used up a whole toner cartridge.

Many months ago, Dennis bought a new printer.  So fine, we get the new printer, however after a short time, all printed pages came out covered with a magenta swirly pattern. Nothing else.  Just purple swirls.  This was not what I expected and it wasn't very useful.  Dennis is in denial.  Then HE gets printed pages covered with magenta swirls.  So he decides it's too much trouble to send it back, so he takes it to an approved printer service guy.  Where it has been for, hmmm, maybe six months.  So Dennis ended up fixing the old printer and buying new supplies for it and it works fine.

He fights with the service guy and Okidata every week or so when it occurs to him.  Still no printer.  Do not talk to him about this printer.  He does not want to talk about this printer.  We do not speak of this printer.

Especially when the old one still works.

Notice it sits on an orange metal cart.  Which we bought from a garage sale or the dump or somewhere very early in our marriage.  It was scuffed and ugly and full of rust.  Somehow the idea of spray painting it bright orange seemed like a great idea at the time.  In 1976.

I just read this to Dennis.  He points out that this cart originally belonged to his folks who gave it to us.  For many years we had a steady stream of items that his folks gave us.  Many times, the items went straight to the Goodwill.  Or maybe I stuffed them into a box in a closet.  That's why sometimes I find boxes of things that don't even look remotely familiar; I have no idea where they came from.  Dennis says this cart had a prominent place in the laundry room when he was growing up.