I had been shredding some old documents from school, and I had gotten overly confident about the number of papers I could feed through at a time.
The shredder decided it had enough, and I, determined to finish the job, reversed and forwarded the machine several times, the papers balling up more and more between the blades.
Eventually, I unplugged the shredder because the motor wouldn't stop running, and nothing was moving through the machine anyway.
"It almost worked," I told Dan as he pulled out a screwdriver. "I was so close."
Dan just stared at me with his famous crinkled eyebrow expression.
A few minutes later, after he had tinkered a little with the shredder, I heard him say, "Maybe I should buy a new one."
"It’s that bad?" I asked.
"It’s pretty bad."
"Are you mad at me?"
"Yes," he said, but he didn’t sound very mad.
A while after that, after much grumbling and grunting, Dan stared at the machine and exclaimed, "What the heck is going on?"
About a half-hour later, Dan announced that he was going to buy a new machine, a wider one, because you had to feed paper through our current shredder absolutely straight, or it didn't work.
"That's not exactly what happened," I said. "I just tried to shove too many papers through at once."
"No, really. I've been thinking about it."
"You're being too nice to me."
"I'm always nice to you when you do stupid stuff."
A little while later, after opening top of the shredder, Dan said with a sigh, "That didn't help like I thought it would."
"Holy cow!" He was now covered in tiny pieces of paper. "Okay, where did the other screw go?"
About fifteen minutes passed, and then I heard the familiar sound of a properly working shredder.
Dan rolled the vacuum into the living room without a word. I gave him the thumbs up sign and smiled.
"Is it the wrong time to ask if I can shred the rest of my documents?"
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