As the old adage goes, you only value your health once it’s gone.

That appears to apply to the health of your digital devices, too; I never realized how much I enjoy the left-side shift, control, and command keys on my MacBook until they suddenly gave out earlier today.

Since then, I’ve discovered that I use command- and control-dependent keyboard shortcuts pretty much nonstop, and I capitalize each ‘I,’ and the start of every sentence, using the left shift key by habitual default.

Having popped out and cleaned all three keys to no avail, I’m planning to simply leave the laptop at rest overnight, in the unrealistic hope that the wonky keys somehow miraculously fix themselves. And, barring that, I’ve blocked out all tomorrow morning to camp out at the Apple store, to see if their team of Geniuses can get things fixed relatively quickly in-house.

In the meantime, I’m at least getting to put my iPhone thumb-keyboarding skills to the serious test. As they say, fml.