Not My Actual iPad 2. In fact, mine still works. This is how my heart looked after I found out.

This Thanksgiving my stepson stepped on my iPad. I’m making my peace with that.
If you look closely at my screen, you can see the crack that stretches from one side of the screen to the other. Smaller cracks radiate out from what I assume was ground zero; the place where his heal came down on it. It still works, but it does so in a wounded, ugly fashion.

In my mind the crack made a slight sound. The sound that ice makes moments before you fall into the cold.  But I don’t know.
I can’t ask him. He doesn’t remember doing it. He hasn’t exactly pled not guilty.  More like no contest.  He’d been playing with it, and once he exhausted it with temple runs and subway surfs he plugged it in. He then placed it on the living floor of my parent’s busy house and went on with his business. Why would he put it on a hardwood floor? Because he’s nine.
What is nine year old boy business? I don’t know.  Nobody knows; not even them. This morning he accidentally took our TV remote to school.  How? Easy.  He didn’t remember to put it down.

All he had to do was position his hand above any of our living room furniture and then release the tension in his hand muscles.  Gravity would have taken care of everything else. But nine year old boys and lunatics forget to put things down; an act so easy that people routinely accomplish it in their sleep. 

So he put the iPad on the floor and walked around. Knocked into things and nibbled on things and talked and didn’t talk. Nine year old boy stuff. Dances were danced and kicks were launched into the air, inappropriately close to very old, very fragile things.

At one point he knocked everything on the love seat onto the floor. Then he walked away. Then he was sent back to the scene of that smaller crime and along the way he stepped on my iPad.  I think.  I picked it up a short time later to find showtimes for Twelve Years a Slave. That’s when my wife saw the crack.
Let me tell you something about the love of my life. She is fiercely intelligent and a gifted craftsman with a radiant sense of urban bohemian style. In a lot of ways, she is super-human. So, you could say that her eyes are her kryptonite. The girl can’t see too well. But she saw the crack.

Glasses are her thing. She has about a dozen pairs, all different, all absolutely unique. Not long ago one of her pairs was missing. The dog had taken then. It gnawed on her designer frames and marred the lenses with ugly scratches.  And I laughed.

I didn’t know they were damaged when I laughed.  You had to get right up on the frames to see the scratches.  All I knew was that our dog had stolen her spectacles,  which is kind of funny. Not “ha ha” funny. More like, “I can’t fucking believe you’re laughing!” funny.

At one point she told me that I wouldn’t be laughing if he has bitten my iPad… Do you see where I’m going? If you’ve ever watched Snapped!, then you know what I’m suggesting. For those of you who don’t know, Snapped! is a TV documentary series that highlights a different woman every week who kills either her lover or a lover’s lover. Before I met my wife, I had never heard of it. After I met her, I became intimately acquainted with it.

I’m convinced that it’s sole purpose is to remind men that women can be just as crazy as they are. In that it is very successful.

Whisper these words to yourself. My wife made her son step on my iPad. A revenge stepping for when the dog chewed on her glasses. She’s coming home soon, and I don’t want any trouble… but I think she did it. I laughed at her, and she Snapped!.

If she did, it was the perfect crime. After all, nine year olds are great patsies. They do so much so often that they have pretty much lost the ability to deny their guilt. Their musty, cluttered brains have repaved the “I didn’t do it” section to make room for Skylanders and empty potato chip bags.

Of course I’m only joking. (I’m Not!). I love her dearly, but even though she calls my iPad, “Chad’s Girlfriend”, I’m sure she would never do something like that. But if you’ve seen Snapped!, you know what happens to the girlfriend. It never ends well for them.