Page 4 of Penny For Your Thoughts
“Uh-huh.” His attention never left the screen. “Will there be cake? I’m only coming if there’s cake.”
“There’ll be cake.”
“What kind?”
“Carrot.”
“Will it have nuts? I don’t like nuts.”
“I’m not sure. I can ask the lady who’s making it to leave them out.”
“Good. Then I’ll be there.” Elwood two-finger pecked the keyboard. The spark of glee I’d witnessed earlier returned.
“What are you up to, Elwood?”
“Chatting with my girlfriends.”
“Is that so? Plural? How many girlfriends are we talking about?”
“Three.”
“Wow. You dog.”
“Huh?” Frowning, he cut his gaze from the screen.
“It’s an expression. Three girlfriends, huh? How’d you manage that?”
He patted the laptop. “This here computer. The whole world in a box. Don’t even need my encyclopedia anymore. You can ask anything, and it tells you the answer lickety-split. Just gotta type your questions in the box. Hang on. I’ll show you.”
With a slight tremble in his hand and his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth, Elwood moved his finger over the touchpad until the arrow landed on a familiar symbol. He clicked, and the installed search engine appeared. “Right there. See the box? Go ahead. Try it. Type anything you want.”
“Google. I’m familiar.”
“Never had computers growing up. Boy, aren’t they something. You can do anything on these things. My grandson gave it to me. He got a new one. Took a bit to get the hang of it, but I’m chuggingalong fine. What do they call it? Swimming in the worldwide ocean or something.”
“Surfing the net.”
“That’s it. Surfing the in-tra-net.” His pronunciation was off, but I didn’t correct him.
“That’s great, Elwood, but tell me. How does owning a laptop get you three girlfriends?”
Elwoodtsked and sighed heavily. “You’re a little slow on the uptake, aren’t ya?”
I chuckled. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re not listening. I told you. You put your question in the box. It has all the answers.” He tipped his head at the screen, indicating the rectangular query box on the Google homepage. “So, I asked it to find me a girlfriend, and it did.”
“It did?” Intrigued, I pulled out a chair and sat. “Tell me more.”
“Well, it took me to a… a whatchamacallit. A website. No. An app. I think that’s short for apple, but I don’t understand why they call it that.”
“Application.”
“Huh?”
“App is short for application.”
“Sure. Whatever. Anyhow. It was for people looking for girlfriends. I had to click-a-roo a few things. Took a few minutes to sort myself out, but now I have three beautiful girlfriends. It’s a miracle. I wasn’t much of a stud growing up, but the girls liked me fine enough, I guess. Now, I’m so gosh darn popular, I get to pick and choose.”
