I'm committing storytelling again...
First off, establishing a few facts. I have a fairly high IQ. It's not Marilyn Vos Savant level, but I typically peg out somewhere between 145 - 155 on a standard IQ test, I scored in the 99th percentile on my ASVABs back in the day... You know - I can generally figure things out. My dad, bless his heart, was a functional illiterate, so yeah, I got it from my Mom (she dropped out of high school in 10th grade to have me - intelligence doesn't always equal smarts), and her sister is similarly blessed in the brain department. All three of us are well-seasoned bureaucrats (Aunt Sherri was a postmistress, I was a purchasing agent, Mom was mid-to-high level IRS - this will come back into relevance), and we all know how to work with red tape and speak fluent bureaucrat.
Moving on to the next fact - we're all small town Mormon women. (Well, we are now. Mom and I both tried to escape our fate by getting the hell out of the state as soon as possible, but you just can't fight genetics - and yes, in our family, it's more of a genetic than a religious thing.) Our family came across the continent pushing handcarts full of our belongings - to misquote Stripes, "Our foremothers were kicked out of every decent state in the US..." and as a result, we're bred for civic duty. (A lot of other things too, but for the purposes of this story, civic duty.) You get 5 Adams women in a room (you need an odd number - otherwise, a card game happens), and a quilting bee will naturally occur - along with some pies, funeral potatoes for a gathering of 60, and in a pandemic, a surprising number of masks and/or hospital gowns. Especially once we retire.
Then there's our family's unique method of dealing with unfortunate news... we build a brick wall and run as fast as we can away from actually addressing grief. Usually, that brick wall is made of whatever project we can find - especially for my mother the project manager. So, since just since October, we've had a massive fight with the third of the sisters, both my father in law and my father passing (in the same week), Sherri catching a breakthrough case of COVID, Mom breaking her foot, Daniel being diagnosed with cancer... we've been needing distraction.
So, Mom decided to volunteer us. Because yes, of course, when she's told to take it easy and stay off her feet for 6 to 8 weeks, naturally, project management is the first thing to pop up. I swear, the woman bleeds GANTT charts. She decided we need to set up a free AARP-sponsored tax-prep center for senior citizens here in the Basin. Which, yeah... fluent in bureaucrat, Mom's got that IRS experience, Sherri has been a bookkeeper, Daniel has excellent community knowledge due to our vaccine work... you'd think it was a perfect fit.
Oh, how the mighty are fallen. First off, you wouldn't think that it would be all that hard to find a space to work out of for a couple of months. You would be wrong. Senior centers? We've got a couple here in the Basin - nope. Empty storefront, maybe? No one wants to get on the bad side of some corporation who will remain unnamed, but who have been cursed by Ken Jennings. Finally found space in a library that will let us in 3 hours a week (but who will be kicking us out promptly because they need the room for the Lego club.)
But that's nothing compared to... the Chromebooks. See, in order to maintain confidentiality and make sure that nothing gets hacked, we have to use a secure connection (ie router) and dedicated computers. Ok. But these little beauties are so secure that we can't actually get into them - the user names and passwords we were given don't work. Ok, so for training purposes, I'll go ahead and use my own computer, and work on that issue in January... log on to the "training portal", do the practice exercises, easy peasy, no problem. Right?
Three women, above average IQ, seasoned bureaucrats, motivated to help.... we're half way through the class, and we're at the point where we've stormed off into separate rooms, if not completely separate houses, the men are all avoiding us if at all possible (amazing how many trips to town have suddenly *needed* to happen), and the dogs are incredibly happy because angry snacks tend to be high calorie and easily dropped. There have been words... lots and lots of words, mostly things like "What do you mean, I can't use a # in my password? It's a special freaking character!" and "It worked yesterday - look, I wrote it down, I entered exactly the same..." or "Look, Box 5 on the SSA1099 is not the spouse's income, I don't care what the teacher says!"
Fortunately, Mom was finally able to summit Mt Paperwork and do the homework this afternoon. I'm in the system and at the point where I can do the homework tomorrow - next class is Tuesday. I'm hoping we're at the summit... we'll see. But might I suggest that rather than building up an arsenal of bombs, we just drop IRS Pub 4012s and Chromebooks on our enemies?
