To Save a Laptop

It was Sunday morning. Cath and I were at Barnes & Noble. I browsed the mags, found a couple, bought a latte. Cath found her book, found a couple of mags, and we sat down in the café. A fellow, 40-ish, was seated near us looking at his computer. He picked up his phone.

“I’m calling about an email I got from you. It says that if I don’t call this number, my computer will be in trouble because there are some Microsoft problems. I just got this computer at Best Buy and I don’t want any trouble.”

Our ears perked up. Was this guy going to punk the scammer or was he going to be scammed himself?

“Okay, I’m online right now. Well, mostly Facebook and I like to read the sports and news and stuff. Yeah, I play some games sometimes.

“What do you mean? If I don’t fix this right now, a virus will lock up my computer?

“So, if I do this, I can allow you access to my computer and you can fix it for me…”

Cath and I looked at each other.

“Should I go over there and say something?” I said. “Maybe I’m wrong, yeah? I mean, he’s a grown-up.”

“I don’t know,” said Cath. “I think you should do something. Just eavesdrop for a few more minutes. See where this goes.”

“Okay, fair point. I’ll wait a bit.”

We read our magazines for a few minutes.

“Okay,” he said. “I see a little window here. You need me to click on the YES? Okay. I did it.

“You can see my screen now?”

Cath and I looked at each other.

“How much?” he asked. “Lemme get out my wallet.”

He reached into his back pocket, took out his wallet, and pulled out his debit card. Huntington green, just like mine.

Cath looked at me.

“I’m on it.”

I got to his table just as he was about to read his debit card number to them.

“Sir, don’t do this. Please, don’t. Really.”

“What?”

“Don’t read them your card number, okay? First, everyone in here can hear you and second, this is public wi-fi. With the right app on my phone, I could steal all your data from your phone and your laptop. You don’t ever want to share personal stuff with public wi-fi.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope, not ever. It’s a bad idea.”

“What do I do?”

“Hang up right now and shut down your laptop. Don’t save anything. Just, here, lemme do this…”

I clicked on his Windows menu. In the window, his only options were “update and shutdown” or “update and restart.” I hit the power button for a hard shutdown.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Just wait like 5 minutes and start it back up. See what happens. And don’t ever click on email links from people you don’t know, okay? I hope we shut down your machine in time.”

I went back to Cath.

“Well?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell. It’s not like I know enough to dig through his C: drive and see what’s in there. Or try and fix it. Way over my head.”

“You did the right thing, Mookie.”

“Ah, thanks, babe.”

We have a computer guy, Jackie at Computer Ninjas. Honest as can be, good dad and husband, military vet. I wrote down his name and number on the back of my business card and went back to the gentleman’s table. He’d restarted his laptop. Everything looked okay, but on the backside, who knows what was going on.

“Okay, here’s a phone number for a computer expert. His name is Jackie. He is 100% trustworthy. And look, don’t buy anything online, like from Amazon or whatever, until Jackie, or somebody, checks out your machine. They could’ve installed a program that would keep track of your typing. So if you type in your debit card number, the program will recognize it, and grab it, and then they’ll have all your money.

“So, okay? Don’t buy anything until you get it checked out?”

“I won’t. And, uh, thank-you. That coulda been really bad, huh?”

“No worries. And yep, woulda been bad. Get it check out, okay?”

“Okay, and thanks, man.”

I went back to our table. I was sweating bullets. The middle of my back was soaked, through the t-shirt and into my hoodie. We shared our latte, Cath and I. I flipped through Esquire UK, Climbing, and Rolling Stone. We bought A Thousand Splendid Suns (Cath’s book club novel of the month), Guitar Player, and Peloton.

We stopped at the grocery on the way home. I made Shepherd’s Pie for Sunday Supper. It was a good day.