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Brief pause to allow you to snicker.

Back to my dismantled joystick. I’m dumbfounded. I am always very careful not to get my joystick wet. Sure, occasionally Lucy the Doofus Cat has caused things to up-end which have brought moisture perilously close to the area, but I’ve always managed to get it wiped off before any damage happened. But no, the moisture is inside the silicone sleeve, as well as on the bottom of the joystick box, near the circuit board. And this is when things get even more interesting.

Dave puts his finger on the moisture and realizes that it’s oily. If I was dumbfounded before, now I am struck completely IQ-less, as I don’t get near any oil whatsoever. Dave sniffs the joystick sleeve, comments that it smells somewhat familiar, almost like furniture polish.

I haven’t been near furniture polish in decades. He persists, saying it might smell a bit like the lemon oil used for wood. I remark that my mother uses orange oil for her antique wood furniture, but because of the smell and my asthma, I have been nowhere near it for decades.

Deeply puzzled, I poke at the joystick sleeve and yes, indeed. It’s oily. I sniff the joystick sleeve and there is a very faint scent, something familiar. I almost know what it is, but not quite.

By this time, both of us are confused and annoyed at our collective inability to identify this almost-familiar scent. Then Dave starts reaching for the impossible, mentions peanut oil and it all comes together. I swear a bell clanged out ding-ding-ding somewhere in the vicinity.

“Could it be olive oil?” I inquire.

Two weeks prior to the session in the shop, I’d started making a new dish. A very yummy dish. You cook some spaghetti. Then you get out a frying pan and start frying up chopped garlic with red pepper flakes in a bit of olive oil. When the garlic is just starting to turn brown, you throw in the pasta and toss it around in the garlic and pepper flakes. Add baby kale (or baby spinach) and some leftover pasta water. Let it sit and steam covered with a lid until ready to eat.

I’ve always used butter for cooking, but do have some olive oil is in a pump spray bottle that until recently was never used. When telling one of my attendants how to make the dish, she held the frying pan in front of me like a shield, almost vertically while spritzing three quick sprays of oil. Part of one of these spritzes had escaped the edge of the frying pan and snuck in between the joystick box and the cap that holds the sleeve.

The result: my joystick was literally sticky. The good news is that all that was required was a cleaning, saving me $350 for a new gimbal.