The other night I watched my 17-year old daughter Maddy perform with her cousin at her school talent show. They performed the Johnny Flynn song The Water.  They were exquisite — perfectly in tune, voices seamlessly blending, looking flawless as the stage light shone on their attractive faces.

And ironically, sitting right in front of me was Maddy's dermatologist, there to watch his son perform. And I thought: I owe this moment to him and the drug Accutane.

Six months ago there is no way Maddy would have been up on that stage.

Writing about one's teenage children is sensitive ground — particularly about their struggles, in Maddy's case her struggle with acne. But Maddy and I have talked about this column and I am writing it with her permission and approval. "I think other teens and their parents should know what we went through," she said. "It might help them make their decisions." (Plus she added: "And none of my friends read your blog, so I don't really care.")

I swear we did not make the decision to go on Accutane — Isotretinoin — lightly. It is a very powerful drug — some would say toxic drug — with the potential for serious side effects. It is hard on the liver, bones and gut. Lawsuits have linked it to depression, rages and suicide as well as Crohn's disease. If you went by what is prominently found on the Internet, you might never consider it at all. And that is one reason why I write this — to give a balanced version to those trying to decide.

By last fall we had tried everything to control her acne.

Maddy's acne story was typical. She first started having breakouts in Grade 8, around age 12. At first Proactive worked. Then we moved to topical prescription antibiotics (Clindasol) with a Rx drying agent (Differin). The doctor by the end of Grade 9 added oral antibiotics — Minocycline starting at 50 mg and rising to 150 mg daily. She was on antibiotics for more than 18 months, a long time and daily antibiotics can have very serious rare side effects, which fortunately Maddy never got. She also took Alesse for hormonal regulation. That complex mix of Rx lotions and pills worked fairly well until the spring of Grade 11.

Then it all stopped working. We had numerous trips to the doctor to try to adjust medications. While diet has longed been deemed unrelated to acne, we still stressed healthy eating and good sleep. I read in recent medical literature that a statistically significant link had emerged between heavier consumption of dairy products to kids with more severe acne. Maddy cut back on dairy to no avail. We tried health food supplements called `Perfect Skin` and other concoctions touted to naturally cure acne. All useless. We even bought a very expensive hand-held infrared light device, recommended in some studies, for which she need to wear special eye-protecting goggles. All it did was burn her face, making it bright red and painful. Her skin was inflamed with acne and scarring. She was miserable.

"There were days where I did not want to get out of bed," recalls Maddy, particularly of last September and October.

I had been avoiding Accutane for months. I had read in the blogosphere about alleged links to Crohn's and suicide. Maddy had read about a risk of losing her hair, another one of its reported side effects. We read a lot of scary stuff on the Internet. But in hindsight, perhaps we would have considered it sooner.  I know some Moms who refuse to allow their teens to go on Accutane but I now feel it is reasonable choice when you have tried all options. And that is why I am revealing some private details to tell the story. As a journalist I feel almost a duty to report our experience -- I always ask others to tell their personal stories to me. Now it is our turn. Maddy agrees with me.

When I finally decided we had to at least talk to the dermatologist about its pros and cons, I got an appointment date of almost three months hence. But I phoned them in desperation "I know you have cancers you are dealing with, " I said, "But I have a teenager who won't come out of her room, who is refusing to go to school. We must get in on the first cancellation."

We were in that week. The doctor examined her and said: "You are the perfect candidate for Accutane."

I voiced my fears, citing various studies. "Don't worry Mom," he said. "I have been using this for 30 years. We will follow her. By the time five months are done, she will likely never have another pimple in her life."

Maddy was sent for a blood test for liver function and when it was clear, she started the pills a week later. She had another set of blood tests a month later and when those, too, showed her liver was tolerating the drug, her dose was increased.

Like about 30 to 40 % of users, Maddy's skin got worse in the first two months. This was tremendously hard. I believe — and recent medical literature has proven this true — the links to depression on Accutane are for those kids who worsen upon starting it. Says Maddy, "You have tried everything and you have all your hopes riding on it — and it makes you feel terrible and still you get worse. That was not fun."

"Hang in there," said the dermatologist. "This is normal."

The drying side effects were tough. Her lips were constantly dry and cracked — but vaseline and Elizabeth Arden's 8-Hour Lip Protectant helped. She had nose bleeds almost every morning during the winter. In week six, she suddenly developed back pain that was so severe that I called the doctor's cellphone on the weekend.  He checked her out Monday morning. "Ease up on her gym class and workouts until the pain goes away," he said.

Her eyes got dry, red and scratchy. Visine worked for that. She developed patches of eczema on her legs and arms, treated with copious amounts of vaseline and 1% hydrocortisone. She couldn't drink alcohol on it and we stressed to her the danger to her liver if she did. "I know Mom, I am not like that," she said. But for some kids it could be a serious risk.

There was one unexpected benefit: instead of losing any hair, it thickened, and she only need to wash it once a week. "I actually loved my hair on Accutane," she said.

We decided, that if she got sick or developed food poisoning or a stomach flu, we would temporarily halt the pills until she got better. There is not a lot of medical evidence for this action but I figured it was such a strong drug that we would not add it to her system if her gut was at all compromised. There is evidence that inflammatory bowel disease can be first triggered by an intestinal infection alone. I reasoned, why add Accutane to the mix? But we never need to temporarily halt the drugs.

By the third month we started to notice an improvement. By the final, fifth month, her skin was clear, the results almost astonishing considering where she started. Now, about six weeks after taking the last pill, she hasn't had a pimple since early March. Her skin now looks almost flawless.

"I was really scared to go on it, but I am glad I did," she says.

We acknowledge that it is not for everyone. That you must investigate all options. You must have liver function tests and have a good dermatologist who sees you monthly.

But even Maddy agrees: "There is no way in the world I would have been up on that stage without it."

And when the concert was over and we were trouping out I smiled at her dermatologist and said, "Thank you."

In recent days, a conversation piece here on the West Coast, along with the Canucks, the election and the deplorably wet cold spring, is the question: "Are you going to get up and watch the Royal Wedding?"

Most of my friends and family respond: "Good God, No! 3 am? I'm not a monarchist. Are you?"

I'm not a monarchist. I care little about the Royal family, as attractive and rich as they are. To me, it is not a glamorous life. I think being one of them would be a sentence akin to life in prison with no chance of parole.

But I will watch the wedding. Maddy, my 17-year-old, and I have already decided we will set the alarm for 2 am,  bake fresh scones ( I will make the batter ahead) and eat them with strawberry jam, clotted cream and a good cup of tea, while no doubt remarking at the unfolding pageant - "Oh, look at that fascinator on Princess Beatrice's head!" or "Victoria Beckham is too skinny!"

For me, watching is not about the celebrities or the fashion ogling, although that is part of the fun, it is about sharing a collective "spot of time."

Poet William Wordsworth coined the term "spots of time" to denote those heightened moments of experience, when reflected upon later, bring trailing with them all sorts of other vivid memories. His poetry is full of descriptions of these spots, which resonate with readers 300 years hence.

Here is the exact stanza, from his poem The Prelude in which the term arises (Book XI, ls 258-278)

There are in our existence spots of time,

Which with distinct pre-eminence retain

A renovating Virtue, whence, ... our minds

Are nourished and invisibly repaired

A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

Wordsworth experienced most of his "spots" in private contemplation while out in Nature and for me many of my spots of heightened present moment awareness come from intimate times with family and friends.

But some come from collective experiences that I witnessed on television, some disasters and tragedies, others of world celebrations and cultural catalysts. In recalling them, I can conjure a flood of details. The first for me was the assassination of  JFK, when I was 5. The next was the debut of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan a few months later. For the Beatles, I can remember being in my aunt Helen's basement, her floor tiles, the red wool dress I was wearing, the tomato aspic jelly mould we had at dinner ( yuck then,  yum now), my rambunctious somewhat scary cousin Billy. I can almost smell, hear and taste it all.

A whole list of TV events carry such shards of vivid memory — the space launches, and the first step on the moon, the Solidarity marches, 1982 Royal Wedding ( watched with girlfriends under a big duvet in one of my first apartments in Toronto with tea and scones), the Berlin Wall coming down, 9/11, the 2006 tsunami...

The events are like thumbtacks in the map of a life, that pin down a point in time, a date and place, to which we can go back with certainty about where and when and what we experienced. I have many other vivid memories of my life, but many float in a general mist of time, a feeling and fabric, but are not so anchored. 

So when Maddy and I make our tea and scones tonight and settle in to watch, it will be more about making our own memories together than it will be about Will and Kate. It is about us, not about them.

Perhaps years from now, when I am dead and gone, she will get pleasure from telling her grandchildren: "I watched the 2011 Royal wedding with my mother, under her big duvet. We made scones at 2 am. I can still taste the strawberry jam ..."

Or else we could sleep through it and have no memory at all.



Back in the Dark Ages, allergic people were probably much more likely to fight off intestinal parasites, viral and bacterial infections and even scourges like the Black Death. Up to 100 years ago, in fact, carrying genes that elicited a high IgE (Immunoglobulin E) response, was probably a distinct evolutionary advantage, something that kept the carriers of these genes more apt to survive to reproduce.

In our modern times, though, "atopic" individuals (those prone to allergies)  find themselves fighting their own bodies or other otherwise harmless substances like peanuts, eggs, milk, nuts, fish, animal dander, dust, mould, grasses, pollens. Simple things can sometimes kill an allergic person. Those prone to allergies are often depicted as weak, mouth-breathing, nerdy, canary types whom others delight in kicking sand in their faces.

I come from a long line of allergic types. My grandfather on my father's side died of an asthma attack in 1926. My father is anaphylactic to flat fish. My sister is deathly allergic to scallops. I get asthmatic to cats, hay and dust, and my throat swells upon eating kiwi. All of us in my family have hay fevers to various grasses and pollens. ( One bonus, allergic individuals are much less likely to get cancer.)

I happened to marry an atopic man, who is allergic to walnuts, peaches, cherries and anaphylactic to bees, wasps and hornets. Our kids didn't stand a chance! Kate our oldest soon after birth developed severe allergies to dairy, eggs and peanuts and had to carry an Epipen wherever she went. When I was pregnant with Maddy, I drank goat's milk,  and ate sweet potato, lamb and ancient grains in an attempt to avoid sensitizing her to common allergens. So far, Maddy shows no allergies but I suspect, any day now, she will emerge allergic to something. She is genetically destined.

With this history, I wasn't surprised, therefore, when just after Christmas this year, I broke out in hives for no apparent reason. Hives are raised, itchy welts that afflict allergic individuals. My hives seemed to arise in the midst of a hot yoga class. Exercise and heat are two known triggers to hives for allergic types. It also happened at a pretty stressful time in my life ( and stress is a known trigger). Plus it arose just after Christmas, which is a time when many foods are consumed that are high in histamines ( chemicals involved in the immune response.) Shrimp, cheese, alcohol ( especially red wine and port), chocolate, spinach, nuts, and celery are all foods with high histamine levels and indeed the day before my outbreak I had eaten almost everyone of those items.

But for almost a month I was miserable. My eyes were swollen and inflamed, I had hives around my hairline, back of ears, down my neck, on my chest, down my belly and down my legs. They ebbed and bloomed almost every day. Spicy food, exercise, and exertion all made them worse. I looked a red splotchy sight, but I felt even worse - itchy, irritable and perplexed. What had caused my hives and what did I need to do to make them go away? Some people live with hives for years. I was damned if I was going to be one of them. I had to get to the bottom of it.

I saw my family doctor three times in three weeks, each time being told I had "chronic idiopathic urticaria" ( meaning she had no idea why I had hives but they didn't seem to be going away.) She gave me different formulations of corticosteroid creams, but they didn't seem to work. I was taking a double dose of Benadryl at night and downing a Reactin every morning. By week three I even went for acupuncture -- weirdly cool but it didn't remove the hives, although I did feel much less itchy for 24 hours.  I researched chronic idiopathic urticaria extensively on the web. All the sites said you must be a sleuth and eliminate all possibilities both internal ( foods, drugs) and external ( products) and then add them back to see what happens. If not, you may fight hives for five, ten and fifteen years.

By week four, I finally got into the dermatologist. His examination lasted, I swear, less than 1 minute, in which he said :  "Seems to be no pattern to the distribution, so must be internal" and wrote me a prescription for an even stronger corticosteroid.

But his words stuck in my head: perhaps there was a hidden pattern to the distribution? I started at the top - if the hives were around my face and head, what was I using on my hair that might be triggering it?

In the shower later that day, I noticed how the water traced a path flowing down from my face over my eyes and body. It was a direct path of my hives! It was something I was using in my shower. The first thing I eliminated was my Herbal Essence Hello Hydration coconut and orchid hair conditioner. My kids and I love this stuff and have used it for at least five years with great results.

I stepped out of the shower and for the first time in a month was not newly itchy and sporting a fresh bloom of hives ( my doctor and I thought it was the heat of the water that was triggering it in the previous weeks.) In a day I was not itchy, within three days, normal. I had somehow become sensitized to a product I had used hundreds upon hundreds of times with wonderful results.

So here is a tip for you allergic types. If you get hives, something you have been using for years may suddenly trigger them. You, and your doctors, may not think there is a pattern, but start at the highest point on your body. If it starts at your head, think of something you use on your face or hair.  Look for a distribution.  If I had really looked I would have seen it weeks earlier.

Suddenly in the shower, the light went on for me, and then four weeks of misery was halted in 24 hours.

But now I am in the market for a good, hypo-allergic hair conditioner. Any suggestions?



 (Or, why I don't Like It's a Wonderful Life)

 Every Christmas Eve, for as long as there has been TV or video or DVD's,  one of my most revered Christmas traditions has been watching "A Christmas Carol," on Christmas Eve — the fantastic 1951 movie of the Dickens' classic with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. The family tradition started in the 1960s when the movie  began appearing as special programming in the week before Christmas, often scheduled on Christmas Eve.

My father would say: "The Alastair Sim one is on the TV!" ( the only one really worth watching, but Bill Murray's Scrooged  does come close )  and the whole family would gather around our RCA Zenith console in the living room to see the dour, grasping, bitter Scrooge go through his ordeal of past and future compression to become redeemed at the end.

The final scenes were worth it all. The giddy, ecstatic, wonderfully-enlightened Sims stands on his head, fluffs his hair, hails the boy in the street to buy a goose ( looks for a label, label, label!) and alarms his housemaid with his utterly changed persona. His portrayal is so infectious with true joy of redemption, of transformation from a grasping miser to a generous enlightened soul,  that one cannot watch it without being a tiny bit redeemed oneself.

Of course, as I had a family of my own, watching A Christmas Carol became part of our tradition every Christmas Eve with my own children. I truly love that film and have seen it likely 40 times, if not 50. I can recite whole passages of dialogue ( "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" "I don't deserve to be so happy.") You know, as he strides of with Tiny Tim at the end, Scrooge is truly changed for life, and he and the world are better for it.

But I don't feel the same way, at all, about It's a Wonderful Life.  Everyone in the whole world seems to love It's a Wonderful Life  and with this blog post I risk exposing myself to flames of criticism and condemnation for my confession that it irks me.

Let me explain: ( Every Christmas I have tried to explain, to anyone who would listen, why I don't like It's a Wonderful Life, ( IWL) but I it is reduced to jokes now in my household: "Mom, your favourite movie is on, har, har.")

Let's go back a bit, first, to how I first came to see IWL.  I grew up in a classic movie-loving household. My father loved good films. I was exposed to multiple viewings of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,  Bridge on the River Kwai, All About Eve, The Wages of Fear and more  —  great character-driven films, all before my 10th birthday. But I never saw IWL. My Dad said he didn't like it , but never said why.  I was almost 30 when I first saw it.

I wanted to like it —I had heard so much about it for years and as a movie buff was eager to add this to my film lexicon. I knew the  plot line, of course. I love redemption films ( Central Station, the Argentine film is another terrific redemption flic) IWL sounded like a great redemption flic of a fallible human character who eventually sees the light.

When I finally saw it, I watched with open mind but I remember being distinctly uncomfortable as it unfolded. At first, I didn't know why it did not fill me with joy. Now that I have seen it many times, I understand why: it is not true redemption. The main character George Bailey is ego-driven throughout and rather than being redeemed at the end, his earlier self is validated.  

Let me deconstruct, if I may. In early scenes George delights in humiliating his future wife Mary when she is naked in the bush ( any young man treating me in that disrespectful way would be dispatched forever with no chance of reprieve! And I hope any young girl, like my daughters,  would say likewise.)  He repeatedly states that he is better than his small town and is going to build bridges and airports and basically "blow this pop stand."  He is increasingly bitter that unlike his medal-winning brother he is stuck in his small town running the Savings & Loan. When the money is lost at the bank he yells ``Where's that money, you silly stupid old fool?" to his doddering uncle and then later, as everything is unravelling, yells abusive threats at the innocent school teacher about ignoring his daughter's sore throat. Worst of all, his proposal to his lovely wife Mary as he is on the phone, is frankly horrible -  a man incapable of declaring true intimate feelings, but instead with his own inability to to be real negates her and his feelings for her. (Why she said yes to him is beyond me, after he left her naked in the bush.  'Come back when you can say you love me to my face, and treat me with respect,' I would have told him!!)

 He is, to me, in the early parts of the film, a good man but an inauthentic man who has leading an inauthentic life of role-identity that he resents and rails against yet does not have the courage or gumption to change.  Of course, as this persona he does do a great deal of good in the world -- he saves his brother's life, he saves a woman from prostitution, he builds houses for the poor and gives them self respect. He contributes to the greater good. He is a good man at heart doing good work. (This is what we all latch onto.)  He hates what he is doing. He thinks his life is worthless because he has not won medals or built monuments ( been acclaimed in other's estimation.)  He is full of inner conflict. Resentment, bitterness, regret define him.

And then his crisis hits, the money is lost, and when he is unable to face the consequences of that loss of face, loss of role and status, he decides to commit suicide - an ego-driven act of someone whose self-identity is completely constructed of what others think of him and what he thinks of himself.

Of course these revealing scenes of self-worth and identity completely tied to external validation would be fine if through angel Clarence he sees his fallibility and becomes truly enlightened about a better way to be and live. But NO! He is shown how, as that inauthentic, ego-driven self all these years, his actions and self-sacrifice have changed the town for the better and how many lives would have been ruined or lost but for his forfeit of his true ( perhaps ego-driven) needs. His inauthentic self is celebrated!

Okay, I admit, that now in my 50s,  that message of "your sacrifice has been worth it" hits a chord. Like most, I have seen some cherished dreams turn to dust, things I held dear that have never come to pass and now likely never will, and so part of IWL  does reaffirm that need we all have to know that our giving up on our dreams, they way our life has unfolded,  has been worth it for the greater good of our children or our society.

But still, at the end when he comes home to friends, they are re-affirming that old, ego-driven self, not a new enlightened one. They don't know he has spent hours with the angel. They don't see the new him and he does not show a changed persona to them. If the husband of the teacher he bitterly scolded only a few hours earlier came through the door, he would still beat him up! And worse, Old Mr. Potter has gotten away with stealing thousands of dollars; Wrongness prevails.

Yes, his sacrifice is acknowledged and it is valued by his community and his friends, but he has not distanced himself from his earlier acts. He is frankly unchanged except for seeing that his sacrifice has had purpose and done good in the eyes of others. ( I believe true good is doing the right thing when no one is watching and no one will ever see. Then your self-belief is internally driven and imutable to the winds of societal approval.)

And as an uplifting Christmas fair,  it rings hollow to me.  I think given six months or a year, or as soon as his world does not validate him yet again, George would be in crisis once more and unlike dear old Scrooge, will not be skippingoff into the future as a truly joyous, liberated, authentic self who does not need things or other people's views of him to make him happy or make him do good for good's sake. Scrooge of course started off a very bad, evil man who becomes good. George is a good flawed man at the start and a still good flawed man at the end, with the only change that he has been recognized by others -- for now.  This is not redemption, it is ego validation.

But I am open to discussion. What do you think?



My new computer gave me the dreaded blue screen of death this past week. Not once but five times in a row, all within 20 minutes of start up and restarts. The block of text was as ominous and incomprehensible as the Star Wars opening.  

"A problem has been detected and Windows has shutdown to protect your computer. ....Modifications of a system code or critical data structure was detected.... Stop code 0x00000109."

The first time, I was startled. The second time perplexed. The third time, hyperventilating. The fourth time (before I could even update my status on Facebook: Anne is hyperventilating) I was a quivering mass of nail-chewing hysteria. The fifth time - ya don't wanna go there.

I had just bought the system three weeks earlier, dropping $1300 plus on the top of the line monster with 8 GB of RAM, a hard drive with enough computing capacity that would have taken up 6 city blocks of IBM mainframes in the 1970s, and an enormous flat screen monitor capable of having three documents full size, all viewed at once for editing and multitasking.

 I had a day of writing and editing to do in a busy week and a nutso month. This could not be happening.  I have all my data obsessively backed up, but I need a functional computer just to get work done.  Telling editors, clients, and art directors that you are late on a deadline because of computer problems sounds as convincing as "the dog ate my homework."

But five blue screens! This was not a computer problem, this was a meltdown. My keening moans of woe  shook the quiet 1940s Victoria apartment block where have my office.

Calm down. Rending garments does nothing. This is obviously a hardware fault on a new system. It is all under warranty. Call Future Shop.

"What is the make and model of your computer?" the clerk asked between my sobs.

“Gateway MS Pro.” 

 “Let me see… oh here. Gateway has a chat forum and email tech support on their website. Just go to www.gateway.com”

 “Calm down ma’am. You are right, email is not much use if your system is not working.  I’ll see if I can find a phone number. Hmmm. I don’t see a phone number. I will transfer you to our tech support.”

I waited while Michael Buble played. Eventually a man came on whose voice sounded completely bored and flat -- to counteract no doubt the hysterical calls he gets all day.

I could hear him sigh as he listened to my problem: “That needs to be dealt with by Gateway, Ma'am.  You are still under warranty. They have online email support and a tech support chat room….”

“Okay. Calm down ma’am. Yes I guess that is no use if you can't get online. Yes, I do have a tech support phone number but we can’t give out that phone number as that is the one we use..."

My frustration was sky high. I tried to keep my voice as even as his. What did he suggest I do with a three-week old malfunctioning system?

"Well the best thing to do is pack up your computer and bring it in here. Blue screens are hard to determine. We will run diagnostic tests. That takes four or five  business days, depending on the problem. If it is not a software problem or a virus, but a manufacturer's hardware problem -- and it sounds like hardware -- then we ship it back to Gateway. It is all under warranty.

And if it was hardware ( I knew it was hardware) how long would my computer be gone?

"One or two months at the most...

 “Well no, we don’t give a loaner…” he said.

Eventually the bored-voice man - to get the hysterical me off the phone --  found a phone number for me to call – that of Acer, the manufacturer of Gateway.

I called the 1-800 number and a pleasant, computer generated woman’s voice answered.

“Welcome to Acer. Please say as clearly as possible the issue you are calling about. You can say sales or tech support or..“

“Tech Support” I yelled.

“Okay. Tech support. What is the technical issue you are calling about?”

“Blue Screen!”

“Okay, blue screen. For operating system issues we need your 11-digit SNID number. You will find this number underneath the bar code on the side of computer. If you do not have this number handy, this automated system will wait until you find it. Say halt to look for the SNID and then say continue when you are ready to proceed.”

(Oh dang!) HALT!

I pulled the computer tower out from my desk, disentangling wires and cords. The bar code was a tiny patch and the SNID an even tinier number underneath it. It looked like this: 00083383712.

I got out my reading glasses and rummaged for a pen light. On my hands and knees under my desk I still could barely make it out. I wrote it down as best I could and then climbed  back up to the phone.

Continue! I yelled.

“Please type in or say the 11-digit SNID number.”

I typed in the number, trying to get the zeroes, 8s and 3s in the right order.

“To confirm, the SNID you provided is: zero, zero, zero, eight, three, three, eight, three, seven, one, two.

That was what I had written down.

“Yes! ” I said.

“This is not an Acer Product. Please call the company who made your computer. Goodbye,” said the voice. The phone clicked dead.  The computerized woman hung up on me.

Shit! I pulled the computer back out, got out a magnifying glass and got back on my hands and knees. Dang!! I had an 8 and a 3 reversed.

I dialled the 1-800 number again.

“Hello,’ said the pleasant computer female. “Is this the same problem you recently called about?”

Okay, at least she is efficient. We can get right back to entering the correct SNID.

“Yes,” I said.

“This is not an Acer Product. Goodbye."

I called my husband Keith, frantic. "Find me another number for Gateway or Acer. I am being blocked by a cyber control freak." He searched websites and got a different number for customer support. I called this one. The same computerized woman's voice answered.

“Is this the same problem you recently called about?” the computer voice said.

“No!” I lied.

“Are you sure? Is this the operating system problem you called about at 10:05 am June 9, 2010,” she tested, almost HAL-like in her menacing, overly-calm tone.

“No!” I lied.

“Okay ( I could tell she didn’t believe me.)  To go any further we need your 11-digit SNID number. You will find this number underneath the bar code on the side of computer. If you do not have this number, the system will wait until you find it. Say halt to look for the SNID and then say continue when you are ready to proceed.”

I entered in the number, holding my breath that this time I would do it correctly.

"You are being transferred," the system said. Muzak played.

A human voice finally came on.

“Hello, this is Raminder, how may I help you?.”

He was in a data call centre on the outskirts of Mumbai, India.

I sputtered out my blue screen problems, the three-week old system, the whole sorry tale.

I could tell Raminder was reading from a binder. He was a lovely caring man ( I couldn't understand half of what he said, but he mumbled it in a very caring kind way.) But he was no use what-so-ever. Ultimately, his only advice: pack up computer in its box -- it was all under warranty -- and either ship it or deliver it by hand to the Gateway office in Burnaby or Toronto. It would be back in one to two months, all covered. But no, they do not give a loaner.

I was on my own.  

 (PS. Thank God for Darryl Gittins, tech writer for Boulevard and computer whiz extraordinaire. He took away my new system, hooked up an old lap top of his to let me survive for three days.  Running my new system through a series of diagnostic tests he discovered  my blue screen woes were coming from a 2GB module of RAM that had a manufacturing glitch. He pulled the RAM -- I still have 20 times more RAM than my last system. Now I am going to see if Future Shop or Gateway will reimburse the cost. I have a feeling, no, because I did not pack up the computer and send it back.)