National Novel Writing Month begins in November, and I'm preparing for it by bringing my AlphaSmart to school. The model AlphaSmart I own is so old, they don't even make it anymore, but it types and uploads to computers so I don't mind. However, the AlphaSmart gets a lot of interesting reactions from my classmates:
The kids I hang out with at lunch saw the AlphaSmart last year, so they all knew what it was. Taryn was significantly taken by it - as expected, she'd take it when she could and type randomly on it. Which was OK when I wasn't working, and pretty fun to watch. There were others who requested time to type on there, but mostly they'd just watch me with it.
Several people told me "That's so cool! I want one for Christmas!" Dude - it's not, really. My 3000 is pretty lame - I really want one of the new Dana devices (the AlphaSmart company changed their name to Neo, or they were bought out I can't remember). My 3000's keys stick, the device-to-computer file transfer is so slow, and I can only see four lines of text at a time. But apparently I'm starting a trend. Who knew.
On several instances, a group of people have, one-by-one, asked me about the AlphaSmart, taking courage from the previous inquiries but obviously not paying attention to my responses to them. Generally a brave first soul will ask "What's that?" and after I reply, two others will turn to look and say "That's cool," while a third says "Wait, what is it?" the cycle repeats until everyone in the immediate vicinity has received the news, and the news travels down the rows of desks. Most annoying is when someone says "What is it for?" at the same time as someone else's "What is that?" because it means answering two questions on two sides, and not being able to get any work done
What's even more hilarious, however, is when no one asks me. In one class period, a few guys sitting around me had an entire whispered conversation about my strange device. They obviously thought I couldn't hear them, but they were whispering back and forth quite obviously. "Hey, what is that?" "It looks like a typewriter, dork." "What's she doing with it?" "I don't know, ask her." "You ask her?" "Hey, what did you say it was?" "I don't know, fool, it looks like a typewriter!" "Well, ask her!" "You ask her!" It was pretty hilarious to listen to, and I couldn't bring myself to sate them by interrupting their conversation. And it kept me from falling asleep in class.
Hopefully, however, this will stop any questions coming up by November. Last year, I felt a bit rude when I kept typing away at my story while others were trying to interrogate me. With any luck, anyone who wants to aske me questions will have them asked by the time I'm ready to ignore them.
