Strange mumbles in the night

Lately I'm reminded that we're getting older. Yep, every last stinking one of us.

Certainly I'm handling it better than most, if you disregard the various bits that have been chopped off of me over the last year or so. Didn't need that leg, or that toe, anyway ...

What's worrying me though (and in retro-examination, needlessly) is the concept that I'm not communicating clearly any more.

The villain in this story seems to be technology. 

And also, friends who are ageing badly, or who attempt to cadge advice from me while being three sheets to the wind, rat-arsed drunk, or stoned out of their trees.

Here's the rumpus.

I seem to have become "Google" for a few people ... the go-to guy when my friends can't remember, or don't feel like Googling their questions themselves. 

The queries usually come at panic pace, either by email or by IM ... "HELP! Something has gone awry, or at the very least, I can't be bothered to think about it myself ... "

Moments later when engaged over IM as "Online Helpdesk Guy",  it becomes apparent my friends are also fairly shitfaced.

And so I gird my loins for a session of repetative "not listening", "skipping steps",  "drunkenly wandering away to go get more booze when I'm in mid-help", and best of all, "not answering my simple questions" so I can figure out what in the FUCK it is they are doing. Or trying to do.

This usually starts out in the middle of a drunken train of thought from their end – the outpouring of an emotional or hate-filled diatribe, involving something about the gizmo in the widget isn't doing what they want, because they just did this one thing and then this happened. OR didn't happen. As the case may be.

I then have to deftly steer them back to the beginning.  What is it you're attempting to do, and what program are you using? What kind of wine is that, and HOW MANY bowls have you smoked?

Then the benchmarking questions: what version is this, and did you do it the way I told you to do it the last 9 times you asked me about this? Did you put in the right password? Oh, you don't remember your password, because you use a different password for everything, but you don't write them down, and trying to remember passwords after 7 huge buckets of wine/vodka is a silly thing to try and do? 

Do I remember your password? Ha ha. 

And on it goes. 

At various points during my typewritten IM instructions, I find myself scrolling back up to see if I typed some gibberish, or something wrong. Nope, there it is, plain as day and clear as a bell, in language a 6 year old could understand (providing of course said child hadn't snorkeled down two bottles of wine, or half a litre of vodka ... or smoked 5 bowls of Alabama Ditch Weed).

It's all good fun, because I exact my revenge in sneaky, underhanded ways ... as we attempt to fix the problem, I subtley and deftly encourage my pals to continue consuming their alcohol/drugs at alarming and increasing speed (and volume).

So that by the time we're finished, they're REALLY finished ... blithering, twitching messes who have melted into the sofa. Or have fallen on the floor.

Of course I too am imbibing, because where's the fun in encouraging the destruction of someone else if you don't at least keep pace enough to enjoy it too?

Anyway, it's good to know I haven't become an unintelligible, babbling, mumbling mess, incapable of getting my points across. 

I just need more sober friends.

Ahhh, who am I kidding! 

Sober people are no fun.

(In extreme cases, or when really pressed for time, I have taken to making a video screen capture "how to" video, which decreases the insensible "not paying attention/skipping steps" portion of the game ...)