One-eyed mom survives spring break (offspring also alive and well)

It was odd, the way it happened.  There I was, typing along, when the keyboard went nuts, printing a string of ‘s’s.  What in the world? I backspaced, pressed the foot pedal, and started again.  That was strange.  This time, the ‘s’ was gone entirely.  Now, the ‘w’ and the ‘u’ had joined it, leaving great, glaring gaps in that patient letter.  This would never do. Imagine the surprise in the office, I thought, if I sent it in like that.  There were holes big enough to drive a truck through.  The editors would not be happy, that was certain, and if there was one thing a transcriptionist wanted, it was happy editors. “’Ick ’inus ’yndrome.”  That would drive them nuts.  So would “’palpable ’pleen” and “’houlder pain.”  It would play havoc with the stress test, too, not to mention shortness of breath, all phrases routinely used by my cardiologists.  Thinking of the gender pronouns, I shuddered.  Suddenly, every Dick, Jane, and Sally was a he.  I could hear the screaming from several states away. Now, I’m not an ’uperstitious person, but sometimes it does seem like bad news comes in threes.  The keyboard collapse came directly after a major computer transition.  And just before that, the hundred-dollar Bose earbuds that I used for my job had bitten the dust.  This left me using The Mister’s more-than-hundred-dollar Bose headphones, the sound canceling kind that clamped so tightly to my head, it gave me sore ears nightly.  They had great sound, alright.  I could hear every slurp, burp, and chirp from those docs on the eastern seaboard.  In stereo.  But they canceled other sounds so well that an entire hockey team could have roared in to play the Stanley Cup in my kitchen – in their tube socks – and I would’ve missed it completely. For all I know, Mr. Schrock’s children dug into last year’s leftover fireworks and shot the whole kablooie off through a back window.  They could have, and I would’ve been none the wiser.