Passing of an Era

Today, my calculator died.

It wasn't an expensive or fancy calculator--a freebie promotional from my uncle's fuel business--but it has sat in my desk drawer for years and served me well. I'm terrible at math, so it was there to help me add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers quickly to give me an average for how much we'd spent on books, or how much a supply we could buy with the allocated money, or the total of two invoices for a single PO. Sure, there is a calculator on my computer and Excel--those get used their share. But my calculator didn't require mousing and space on my computer screen.

I had added a couple of invoices together to get the total for the PO and my calculator worked fine. Minutes later I went to figure out how much 12 nylon bags would cost at $9.49 each and my calculator wouldn't even turn on.

I think I'll probably take my calculator home. Maybe someone will enjoy taking it apart to see the insides.

Now I'm on the look-out for a freebie calculator and a letter opener something like this. (My last letter opener just disappeared while my desk was a mess. I'm suspecting it got filed among some papers. I haven't seen it in months.)