Air Abacus

 

When I was a child, most of my classmates went to abacus classes or calligraphy classes after school. I went to a calligraphy class.

When I was a junior high school student, I was a member of the student council. One day, when we were working on a school event, we needed to do a calculation. Of course, we didn’t have any cell phones or smartphones. I knew there was a calculator in the teachers’ office, but it was a very expensive treasure. We couldn’t borrow it. So I tried to write down the calculation and solve it.

However, one of the council members said, “Let me calculate it.”

He started doing mental calculations. He had studied the abacus, but his mental calculation style was very funny. There wasn’t any abacus, but he moved his fingers as if he had one. It was an “air abacus.” I had no idea about the abacus, so I laughed about it—but his calculations were always right.

The student council often needed to do calculations. Every time we requested him to do mental calculations, I asked him, “Do you need to move your fingers during calculations?”

He answered, “Yes, I need to.”

I doubted him because the mental calculations were done in his brain. Fingers were not related. I thought I needed to do an experiment.

One day, as usual, we asked him to do some calculations. He started the mental calculations while moving his fingers. I slapped his moving fingers.

He shouted, “I am confused!” He really needed to move his fingers during calculations.

Calculations and fingers are related to people who have studied the abacus. I am thinking that the same thing might be said about air guitarists. If you slap an air guitarist’s fingers, the air guitarist might say, “I am confused!”

Dear friends, don’t disturb air players.

 

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Picture by freehand 

Laughing with a Computer

 

 It must be in the 2000s. My mother asked me to teach her how to use a computer.

 In the 1990s, personal computers rapidly spread. In the 2000s, some people who could not use computers felt inconvenienced. My mother was one of them. So she asked me to teach her how to use one.

 Frankly speaking, she was a bad student. Studying a new thing may be difficult for an old person. It is possible to think that my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease already started at that time. She had the diagnosis in 2007.

 I taught her the same thing many times, but she never memorized it. Every time I start the lecture, I needed to explain from the beginning. I could not see her progress. I believed she would never master blind touch.

 At that time, An American company started to sell Japanese voice input software in Japan, which was earlier than Japanese companies. Nowadays, most smartphones have voice input systems. But at that time, it was an epoch-making product. It cost $800. I was tired of my mother’s lack of progress. I decided to buy this software. If she could use it, there was no need to do blind touch.

 The first day of using the software, I did the initial setting. I let my mother wear an earphone with a mic. I let her read her speech draft. Our computer started to input the speech. It worked!

 But the software made a stupid mishearing. It was almost a joke. My mother looked and laughed, “Ha, ha, ha.”

The software listened to her voice and inputted “ha, ha, ha.” She watched the screen and laughed again, “Ha, ha, ha.” Again, the computer entered “ha, ha, ha.” That was an endless hell.

 We gave up using this software. It was too complicated and not of high quality.

 The $800 software gave us laughter, and it was never used. My mother quit studying the computer. If she needed one, I used the computer instead of her.

 If we had the money, with $800 we could go on a short trip and have a delicious meal.

 

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Picture by phonlamaiphoto