Brian, Peter, Joan, and Michael
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Matthew typed, “ playstation 2 grinding noise,” into Google and found multiple sites, mostly message boards, with probable repairs for his game. He chose the repair that looked most promising, two pages of instructions beginning with, “This will fix your problem. You’re going to be surprised when you find out how easy this is.” Matt printed the instructions, picked up the Playstation and together we bounded upstairs.

The message board guy was right about one thing. The process of the repair was easy. Pop the cover of the Playstation, plug it back in, and, with the innards exposed – including, I might reluctantly add, all the electrical components- reset the toothy white disc that controls the angle of the DVD. The angle of the platter is critical to how smoothly the disc spins, and whether the laser beneath it will read information. You get either the game or the movie, Playstation doesn’t discriminate, or the dreaded and present, “No Data Read.”

To change that angle, we were supposed to rotate the white gear wheel an eight of turn, pop a disc in, see if it works, if not, continue to rotate by eighths, until it does. Except it never did. Matthew and I, lying flat on the bedroom floor, worked side by side. I used my screwdriver to pull the small metal stop away from the gear, and he’d use his to advance the wheel four notches. With each advance, we would look up expectantly at the TV, frown, then rotate a few more notches. We succeeded in getting the disc to spin almost chatter free, but not to play the DVD.

Diane called us down for dinner ( butternut squash, apple soup and spinach quiche) and before my first spoonful, I turned to Matthew and said, “What we need is an occasional success. If you had my father instead of me, you’d have nothing but successes.”

“But what about the BMW?”

“What about it?” I answered defensively, “It was the warped head he couldn’t fix, and he couldn’t find anyone he thought competent to grind it.”

Diane jumped in, “But I thought it was engine overheating that he couldn’t fix.”

“Oh yeah. Okay, that was a problem too and he never did figure that one out. So there is one, so-called failure, in fifty years. Matt, how many failures have we had?”

“You mean in the last week?”