mechanical apparatus. When I first encountered the word typewriter , it was without explanation, as something obvious and familiar, and I was able to glean only that it was a thing with keys over which the nimble fingers of women sometimes flew. At first I thought it must be a kind of musical instrument and was puzzled by its connection with clatter . When I finally figured out that it was a machine for putting words on paper, I was tremendously excited. Though there was no typewriter anywhere that I could put my paws on, just the idea of it loosed a flood of images. I saw myself planting brilliant typewritten notes around the shop for Norman to find and puzzle over. In my dreams, he found them and scratched his head and left little missives in reply.
Well, we already know how Norman let me down. The typewriter ditto. I dug up detailed descriptions and labeled drawings, and I even saw them at work in the movies. The verdict was unequivocal: too big, too heavy. When you are small, it is not enough to be a genius. Even if I could depress the keys, perhaps by jumping on them from a height, I would never be able to wind paper into the roller - rats are not good at knobs - or work the long silver lever that made the carriage rasp back into place. I had learned from the movies that a typewriter really does make a kind of music, and I knew that I was never going to hear it for myself, the bright ping of accomplishment at the end of a line or the long applauding scrape of the carriage slamming back to start another. As things have turned out, when I finish a line I hear nothing, just the silence of thoughts falling endlessly down the hole of memory.
But as I have said before, I can be very persistent when I want something badly enough, and I did not give up on the idea of conversing with humans. Only a couple of weeks after abandoning the typewriter project, I had discovered under LANGUAGES a slim yellow pamphlet called Say It Without Sound: A Pictionary , and there I found pictures of dozens of the signs used by the deaf to speak. When I first came across this book I was sure that at last I had found what I sought. Common words were arranged alphabetically, as in a dictionary, and opposite each entry as its ‘definition’ was a photo of a pretty woman in a red sweater making the corresponding sign. It was because of her, I suppose, that the idea of signing became associated with Lovelies. Next to the word friend , for example, was a picture of the shapely-sweatered Lovely holding her left and right index fingers together. Friendly fingers close together. So I got my hopes up again. Foolishly, it turned out, since I soon discovered that whoever had devised this silent language had intended it for creatures equipped with fingers. With what I had in the way of feet and claws, I found it impossible to stammer out even the most rudimentary phrases. I could manage at best a kind of digital stutter. I stood in front of the mirror, painful as that was, and balancing on the rim of the sink, struggled to say in sign, ‘What do you like to read?’ I tried letting my body stand for a palm and my legs for fingers and then midway through the phrase changed the principle and let my forelegs stand for arms and my hind legs for thumbs. Slapping my chest now, then crossing my legs, then curling up in a ball, I flung myself frantically about like a man with his clothes on fire. It was useless.
Desperate situations, however, breed desperate hopes, and so after being nearly poisoned to death by Shine I went back to the idea of signing. At this point I figured a rudimentary phrase might be all I needed, just something to let people know that I was smart and friendly. It had been a long time since my first attempts, and though few things left the store without my knowledge, I was apprehensive that someone might have slipped out with the pamphlet one day when I was away at the Rialto or ratnapping in the ceiling. Someone deaf, of course,
Well, we already know how Norman let me down. The typewriter ditto. I dug up detailed descriptions and labeled drawings, and I even saw them at work in the movies. The verdict was unequivocal: too big, too heavy. When you are small, it is not enough to be a genius. Even if I could depress the keys, perhaps by jumping on them from a height, I would never be able to wind paper into the roller - rats are not good at knobs - or work the long silver lever that made the carriage rasp back into place. I had learned from the movies that a typewriter really does make a kind of music, and I knew that I was never going to hear it for myself, the bright ping of accomplishment at the end of a line or the long applauding scrape of the carriage slamming back to start another. As things have turned out, when I finish a line I hear nothing, just the silence of thoughts falling endlessly down the hole of memory.
But as I have said before, I can be very persistent when I want something badly enough, and I did not give up on the idea of conversing with humans. Only a couple of weeks after abandoning the typewriter project, I had discovered under LANGUAGES a slim yellow pamphlet called Say It Without Sound: A Pictionary , and there I found pictures of dozens of the signs used by the deaf to speak. When I first came across this book I was sure that at last I had found what I sought. Common words were arranged alphabetically, as in a dictionary, and opposite each entry as its ‘definition’ was a photo of a pretty woman in a red sweater making the corresponding sign. It was because of her, I suppose, that the idea of signing became associated with Lovelies. Next to the word friend , for example, was a picture of the shapely-sweatered Lovely holding her left and right index fingers together. Friendly fingers close together. So I got my hopes up again. Foolishly, it turned out, since I soon discovered that whoever had devised this silent language had intended it for creatures equipped with fingers. With what I had in the way of feet and claws, I found it impossible to stammer out even the most rudimentary phrases. I could manage at best a kind of digital stutter. I stood in front of the mirror, painful as that was, and balancing on the rim of the sink, struggled to say in sign, ‘What do you like to read?’ I tried letting my body stand for a palm and my legs for fingers and then midway through the phrase changed the principle and let my forelegs stand for arms and my hind legs for thumbs. Slapping my chest now, then crossing my legs, then curling up in a ball, I flung myself frantically about like a man with his clothes on fire. It was useless.
Desperate situations, however, breed desperate hopes, and so after being nearly poisoned to death by Shine I went back to the idea of signing. At this point I figured a rudimentary phrase might be all I needed, just something to let people know that I was smart and friendly. It had been a long time since my first attempts, and though few things left the store without my knowledge, I was apprehensive that someone might have slipped out with the pamphlet one day when I was away at the Rialto or ratnapping in the ceiling. Someone deaf, of course,
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