Catching Up in the World of Not

I just bought a Nook. I used to think they came with a Cranny, but this one didn’t.

It took one entire afternoon to get the thing powered up, set up, registered, online and everything else because I come from a different world. In my world, people watch TV on their television, not their telephones. They listen to music on stereos not earplugs. But I’m learning: I’m now reading via something that is Not a bOOK.

The most unsettling thing about my Not bOOK is the touch screen. Of course there’s not actually anything on it to touch, and after being told all my childhood years to keep my fingers off the television screen and the windows and the mirrors, I feel like I’m breaking some kind of universal law by touching it in the first place.

It depends, however, on what part I touch. Not that I can feel what I’m touching, like keys on a keyboard or a piano. It’s more like pointing than touching. I point my finger at an icon—a word that used to mean little statues in grottoes—and voila! the screen changes. Touch it for too long, like say, a second or more, and it changes again into something I didn’t want. I aim for nano second—that moment in time that is Not a second.

Another Not with a Not bOOK is the page. They’re called pages but it takes more than one screen’s worth to hold all the words on what was once a page, so when I “turn” one by barely touching the edge of the screen, I may get two or three screens before the used-to-be page number actually changes. So they’re not really pages on my new Not bOOK. Not that I care, mind you.

In a way, it’s fun playing catch-up in the Not world. What I need now is Nice-cream: dessert that does Not have sugar, fat or calories.