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The Calculator Kid by Christopher Lau It was horrible. Absolutely horrible, I tell ya. I saw this Chinese mom, the other day, buy her kid a graphing calculator for his birthday. She goes into Radio Shack, and while she was in there, I accidentally overheard him and his sister talking. He thought she was getting him an iPod! But she came back with a graphing calculator. But he had to pretend to like it. It was the most pathetic act I'd ever seen. Here, I'll try to recreate the scene for you: Oh wow! A graphing calculator... cool! You can, like, draw graphs and stuff on it! AWESOME! Hey, look, the on button is right in the bottom corner, so it's not, like, you gotta pick up the calculator and go, "HEY WHERE'S THE ON BOTTOM"... cuz it's right there! Thanks mom! Hey, Jennie, look, the cursor even beeps. You know how on my regular calculator, I'm always like, "uhh... where is the cursor..." hey look, it's right there... oh man... like y equals mx plus b... no PROBLEM... *plays around with it a bit*... hey, did you see this? You can, like, type letters in it and stuff. So I can write stuff. Here, I'll write your name, Jennie... J-E-N-N... wait wait... N-I-E... hey, mom, look, I wrote Jennie's name. Here, I'll write mom on there too... M-O-M... COOL! Man, Jeffrey's going to be so jealous when I show him this. He'll be fiddling around with his old one, and he can't figure out where the cursor is, and I'll be like, "Hey Jeffrey... I'm done question 4, what about you?" and he'll be like, "I'm on question 1, I can't find my cursor!" then I'll laugh so hard at him. Man, with this TI-83, man... I can't wait Then his friend Jeffrey actually walked by at that moment, I'm not kidding. I'll try to recreate the conversation: Jeffrey: Hey, check it out... an iPod... *silence for a few seconds* Jeffrey: Yeah, man, it's got, like, 100 Gigs or something of memory. Dude, it's pretty rad. What the hell is that? Boy: Calculator... Jeffrey: Dude, did you just buy that? Why didn't you ask me, I would've given my brother's calculator to you. It's even better than that one, but he's not using it anymore. Boy: oh... Jeffrey: Anyways, I've gotta go. See ya tomorrow... Boy: bye... Now I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but I think his mom didn't understand the conversation, so she packed up the calculator for him and walked off with her two kids. But as he was leaving, I saw him turn around and look enviously at Jeffrey, bopping away on his iPod. A tear came swelling to his eye, and I think a tear drop came to mine too. It was a pitiful moment. Pitiful in both his acting abilities, and pitiful in the sense that I felt overwhelming pity for the young boy, soaking in utter defeat at the hands of the ruthless Jeffrey. I'm just glad that never happened to me in the past. I always got cool stuff like cool math books, pens, and once I even got a totally rad pair of socks. Yeah, I could, like, wear them in bed, and they were warm so it's not like, "Hey, it's cold in here! Give me some heat" and it liked saved money on heat too. Man my friend Jason was going to be so jealous... |