Sumbitch mouse.

I started working on the Internet many years ago, for the same big box retailer I’m privileged to work for still.

In those days, there was no such thing as high bandwidth; if you wanted to get online you had to buy a modem, which eventually reached speeds of 56 kbit/s, as fast as they got before offices were routinely equipped with T1 lines.

At that point, the Internet tipped over and everyone who worked in an office with open access began viewing ads and doing their shopping online. That turned Mondays and Fridays into heavy traffic days. The Monday spike persists to this day, I suspect not because folks don’t have access at home, but because the habits they established then are still with them today.

It was during this part of the Internet’s history and my role with my big box retailer, that I became the Dot Com Call Center. I took calls and answered emails from our customers. Our website was too small and unimportant then to matter to the rest of the company, but eventually I was answering 100+ emails a day, at which time folks began to realize something wonderful was happening and they wanted to be a part of it. That’s when I turned my support role over to others and returned to writing.

But before that happened, I took a call from a folksy old man whose voice sort of dripped from the corner of his mouth like he was chawing honey comb.

He was having trouble creating his shopping list from our online ads, and also happened to be having trouble with his mouse; in viscous exasperation he kept saying “sumbitch mouse” each time I asked him to click on something.

We eventually got his ads straightened out. His mouse, alas, eluded us.

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Fresh honeycomb was a treat for us when we were very small. My Grandma and Grandpa Cairns would bring it home from visits to a bee farm. They didn’t do it often, just a couple times that I remember. The honeycomb came packaged in small wooden boxes, about the size you might sell a ring in.

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