Without a doubt every one of you has heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Usually this tidbit is attributed to Albert Einstein because Morgan Freeman’s quote file is full and no one remembers Andy Rooney. Einstein never said it, though, and probably didn’t believe it. I know I don’t.

Even as a kid I’d try to get away with things without having my mom and dad find out and they’d always find out and I’d just keep trying, and then one day I got away with something. I don’t remember what, but it was a seminal moment for a young person whose operating principle was expediency. “You were the child who always said ‘Yes Ma’am’ and ‘No Ma’am’ and then went ahead and did whatever you wanted to anyway,” my mom told me, once I’d gotten old enough she wasn’t responsible for me anymore. Kept a lot from her then, too.

In the digital age, the old saw clearly is not true. The actual definition of insanity is a permanent condition of a disordered mind. And although navigating the digital age is certifiably crazy-making for old people who grew up at a time when cause-and-effect was more readily discernible, when the air wasn’t swarming with pixels and bytes, it is rarely permanent. If nothing else, we’ll forget about it when someone gets things working again.

The first time I saw creative insanity in action, I was having some kind of problem with my new computer. I had my neighbor Beth come over. She’s both younger and smarter than me. I explained the problem and she sat down and commenced punching keys.

“I tried that already,” I said, but she wasn’t listening. She was muttering to herself.

“Oh, I don’t THINK so,” she was saying, before punching the same keys again. Same result.

“Oh, I don’t THINK so,” she said. Punch. And again. And again. Until suddenly, Wallah! as neither of us would have said—the desired result shot out of the ether and onto my document. To this day “to Beth” is a working verb in our house, and it means “to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.”

Of course, those were the early days of personal computers, when they could smell fear and punish timidity. When I sat at my computer, my computer would giddyap and then head straight over to a low branch to scrape me off. When Beth saddled up, she put some spurs to it.

I don’t have so many problems with my computer now. The flat screens don’t have room for extra attitude. But card readers at the store are a different matter. For one thing, they’re all different. I try to study them while I’m still in line so when it’s my turn I don’t look like the old lady rummaging around her purse for her checkbook once she gets the tab. Do I swipe my card up the side? Jam it in the butt end? Impale it from the top? Or—worse—is this the kind I just wave my card at like I’m casting a spell? I hate those. Apparently I wave wrong.

But once I have it sussed out, I should be good to go. Except when it doesn’t work.

This is not a new problem. Dave and I still fondly remember when our credit card’s magnetic stripe punked out forty years ago. We’d handed it to the clerk to run, who burst out laughing when she read off her machine. “It says this card is ‘unbearable,’” she said. And it was.

Anyway yesterday at the grocery store the machine didn’t like my card no matter how I stroked it or rammed it. And I knew perfectly well that this was the card in an intimate relationship with my money. It could suck money out like nobody’s business. “It always sucked before,” I told the clerk, who did not look edified.

But I Bethed it. I squared up to the machine and probed like an alien. Again. And again. And finally it reared up and snorted and galloped off to my financial institution. That might be insane.

But it’s just what I expected.