Out of My Mind (11 page)

“I get it!” Catherine cried. “You want something specially designed for you! That’s just plain brilliant, Melody!”

I spell out
D-U-H
, and we laugh.

Miss Gordon starts class then, reminding everyone about due dates for the biography project.

“Tomorrow,” she announces, “class will meet in the media center so that you can make final choices about the person you will write about. And next week we will begin making outlines of your life stories. Any questions?”

Connor, always the class clown, raises his hand. “I found out the guy who invented the flush toilet was named Thomas Crapper. Can I do my report on him?”

Kids crack up. Rodney laughs so hard, his whole face turned red.

Miss Gordon shushes Rodney and the others. “Sorry, Connor. I get this request every year. The flush toilet was invented in 1596 by John Harrington. No funny name. Do you still want to research him?”

Connor looks deflated. “Nah, I guess I’ll stay with the folks who started McDonald’s. If I’ve got to spend a lot of time looking up stuff, burgers are better than toilets.”

Rodney tries to bust out laughing again, but Miss Gordon silences him with a look.

“Who will you choose to write about?” Catherine asks me as Miss Gordon walks around the class talking to students about their projects.

I think for only a minute.
S-T-E-P-H-E-N H-A-W-K-I-N-G
, I spell out.

I want to know how he does ordinary stuff, like
eating and drinking. After all, he’s a grown man. Does his wife put him on the toilet? He has kids. How does he manage to be a dad?

And I want to know about his talking devices, the supercool computers that help him talk and do really hard math problems, like finding black holes in space.

I tap out the question for Catherine:
Computer for me?

“I have no idea!” she replies. “Let’s check it out.”

The next morning we get the first snowfall of the season. Big, fat flakes fall outside the windows of room H-5.

Freddy zooms over and touches the window. “Nice,” he says.

Mrs. Shannon rolls all of us closer so we can watch the snow accumulate on the grass and trees. It’s really pretty. Even Jill seems to relax.

“We gonna play in the snow?” asks Maria.

“No, Maria. It’s too cold to play outside, but guess what? It’s gettin’ close to Christmas!”

Maria cheers.

“I’ve heard it’s some sort of a tradition round here to decorate this old Styrofoam snowman,” Mrs. Shannon continues. She makes a face as she pulls Sydney’s head out of his box.

Maria starts to hug it, but Mrs. Shannon stops her and says, “I believe in the smell of fresh pine trees at holiday time, and real candy canes, and popcorn garland. Tomorrow I’m bringing in a real tree and we’re going to make it beautiful!”

Freddy and Carl slap palms. Maria looks disappointed for a moment, but she seems to forget about the snowman as Mrs. Shannon gives everyone a soft piece of chocolate candy. She wisely stuffs Sydney back into his box.

While Mrs. Shannon shows the rest of the class how to make paper snowflakes, Catherine and I sit together in front of the one clunky classroom computer and do Web searches on communication devices. It’s soooo slow. Sometimes it gets jammed up and stalls, and we have to reboot it and start all over. Room H-5 always gets the big old leftover computers that the other classrooms no longer want.

Catherine and I research all kinds of electronic talking and communication devices that have been designed for people like me. Lots of them seem as clunky and awkward as our room computer. Some look really complicated. All of them are expensive. Crazy expensive.
Some of the websites don’t even list the prices—like they’re afraid to specify how much the things cost.

The devices that use standard computer keyboards wouldn’t work. I’d have no way to hit the individual keys. I need something that would work with just my thumbs.

We find adapted computers, talking boards that speak the words, push-button systems, and even devices that work with blinks or head nods. Finally, we find something called a Medi-Talker that looks like a possibility. It has spaces big enough for my thumbs to get into and millions of words and phrases built into it!

I watch an online video of a boy about my age using one, and even though he clearly has no voice of his own, this little box lets him tell all the details of his recent birthday party! I get so excited that my legs start kicking and my arms start flailing and I look like some kind of crazy human helicopter.

Catherine prints out the information and tucks it into the book bag that is attached to the back of my chair. “Good luck, Melody!” she whispers as she leaves for the day.

When I get off the bus after school, Mrs. V is waiting for me as usual. I almost twist out of my seat trying to point to my bag to let her know I have something important in it.

“Hold your horses!” Mrs. V says. “Since when are you excited to do homework? What’s got you all in a tizzy today?”

I just grin and kick. After my snack of caramel candy (first) and tuna melt (last), and after Penny, who has just gotten up from her nap, eats her applesauce, Mrs. V
finally
pulls the papers out of my bag.

“Well, this is
exactly
what you need,” Mrs. V says, slapping the printouts onto the table after reading them. “No wonder you’re all fired up.”

Yes! Yes! Yes!
I point. Then I point to the individual words:
Talk. To. Mom. And. Dad. Talk. Talk. Talk.

“I’ll do just that, just as soon as they get home from work, Melody,” Mrs. V promises.

I can hardly wait. While Penny watches Cookie Monster gobble carrots instead of cookies on
Sesame Street
, I dream of talking, talking, talking.

When Mom picks us up, Mrs. V, true to her word, not only shows Mom the printouts, but even has her computer already set to the Web page where the Medi-Talker is advertised and sold. Penny sits on Mom’s lap and keeps pushing computer keys, messing up the display, which is getting on my nerves. But Mom watches the video that shows people actually talking and cracking jokes and even going to college by using that machine.

Mrs. V explains to Mom how this is exactly right for me, and Mom, instead of being practical and sensible and thrifty like she usually is, seems to agree.

“Looks like insurance will cover about half the cost,” she muses as she navigates the website. “Let me talk to Chuck. This is long overdue.”

Tonight?
I ask from my board.

“Yep! Tonight!” Mom says, giving me a squeeze.

But nothing happens right away in my world. Mom fills out the online application for the machine the next day and sends it in. I wait.

Then we have to ask my doctor to fax in a prescription. I’ve heard of prescriptions for antibiotics, but for machines? That seems crazy. Who’d ever want this machine unless they needed it? I wait.

Next, we have to get approval from our insurance company. More paperwork and phone calls, more questions and answers. I wait.

A parental financial statement has to be turned in. You gotta be kidding! Why do they make it so complicated? I wait.

The medical form was missing one signature and has to be resubmitted. I wait.

One last approval form from a school official has to be turned in. I wait.

I realize I’ve been waiting for this thing all my life.

Finally, finally, finally, on the Wednesday before Christmas, the Medi-Talker arrives. I need no other gift.

When I get home from school, Mrs. V tells me that she hurried to my house when she saw the UPS truck pulling up in our driveway. She signed for the package and brought it to her house for safekeeping. The huge brown box sits there taped and secure. And it is addressed to
me
!

I wiggle and squeal and insist we open it right away. I can feel one of my tornadoes coming on.
Spastic City, here I come!

“Calm down, Mello Yello,” Mrs. V says, placing a hand on my shoulder, but I can’t relax.

Open! Open! Open!
I tap.

“Well, your mom knew you’d be impatient,” Mrs. V says, “so when I called her to say it arrived, she told me it was okay for us to open it.”

I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack watching Mrs. V carefully open the edges of the box. She lets me pull at the brown paper inside. Then, under about a mile of bubble wrap, there it is. The Medi-Talker. Smaller than I expected, it’s only the size of my wheelchair tray, but it’s sleek and shiny and cool to the touch. It is like a butterfly ready to unfold its wings.

Boy, oh, boy. I can’t wait to try it.

Mrs. V plugs it into a wall outlet to charge the battery,
then pulls out the
huge
booklet of directions. “Whew!” she says. “This will take a year to read and understand.” She flops down in a soft easy chair with Penny on her lap and begins to read.

And I begin to wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, when I just know I’m going to explode, I wheel over to the table where the Medi-Talker sits.

I’ve seen the kids at school play video games they’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen them program their phones and computers without touching a book of instructions. So I take my right thumb and push the on button. The board whirs and glows, and then a welcome message appears on the screen.

I push another button, and a voice that sounds like an Englishman with a really bad head cold blurts out,
“Welcome to Medi-Talker!”

Mrs. V jumps up from the couch. I shriek with joy. “It looks like you’re way ahead of me, Melody. Not that I’m surprised.” She sets Penny down. “Now let’s see what this machine can do!”

I feel like Christopher Columbus bumping into America. It had been there all the time, but he was the first one from his world to find it. I wonder if his heart had beat as fast as mine is.

We quickly discover that the Medi-Talker has more than a dozen levels, all easily reached with just one
button. So on level one we program in the names of everyone I know—my name, all the members of my family, kids and teachers at school, my doctors, the neighbors, my parents’ friends, and, of course, Mrs. V. On the second level she insists we add all the vocabulary words we’ve been collecting on our multicolored three-by-five-inch flash cards.

Type, save. Type, save. Mrs. V’s fingers fly as she keeps adding words for me. Lots of our vocabulary words are already in the machine’s memory, but she gives me more. More. More.

Nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives—thousands of them—as well as a cool sentence-maker that is located on another level. We can prepare hundreds of phrases and sentences and get to them with just a touch.

Have you heard their latest song?

That’s what’s up!

How did you do on the spelling test?

Ordinary words. Normal conversation. I’ve never had that. Awesome.

Another level is for numbers and even computation—I’ll be able to do math now. Maybe I won’t tell the teachers about that one.

And there’s a level full of corny jokes and silly sayings, with room left for us to add more. Another level plays music! I can connect the device to a computer and
download any song I want. I can’t wait to search iTunes. Maybe I can ask Rose which songs are hot.

Rose! I can actually talk to Rose now!

We stop programming after a while. Penny needs to be changed and kept occupied. But I’m much too excited to rest.

So after Mrs. V gets Penny set up with her dollhouse at the foot of the couch, we add even more words and phrases. Finally, she stops typing and says, “Would you like to try it out?”

The room is absolutely quiet. I stroke the edge of the machine softly, then push two buttons.

“Thanks, Mrs. V,”
the computer’s voice says.

She blinks real fast. I do too. She reaches for a tissue. We both need it.

Mrs. V tucks the tissue into her pocket, then begins reading again from the instruction manual. “Hey, listen to this!” she says. “With that connector cord, you can also save longer things you want to write—like stories or poems—on the computer!”

“Wow,”
the machine says.

Mrs. V nods in agreement. “This is going to be fun. But you’re gonna need lots of practice to make it say what you want, kid.”

She’s right.

Many levels have been left blank for users to input
their own information—words, sentences, phone numbers, even pictures. Information can be typed directly into the machine, or it can be downloaded from a computer. It’s a little overwhelming.

“We can design this to fit
you
, Melody,” Mrs. V tells me. “This will be
your
world, so let’s take our time and make it exactly what you need.”

I am so happy—I almost feel like hugging the machine, but that would look silly. Instead, I name it. That’s probably pretty dumb, but sometimes it’s good to have something that nobody else knows but you. I’m not going to type the name into the machine, because it’s personal, but in my mind I’m going to call the Medi-Talker “Elvira,” after that song I like. Yep, my heart’s on fire for Elvira!

While Mrs. V plays with Penny for a while, I continue to explore what Elvira can do. One of the first changes I want to make is the hello message and the voice that speaks it. The computer-produced greeting sounds really fake. But the machine offers several female voices to choose from, as well as a bunch of different languages.

I pick the voice called “Trish.” She actually sounds like a girl, not a grown-up. I wouldn’t mind sounding like her if I could talk.

“Bienvenue,”
Trish says in French. I know that means “welcome.” I push the button for German and she says,
“Willkommen.”
I even find something that sounds like
“Foon ying”
when I touch the button for Chinese.

I stop for a minute and stare at the board. It has never occurred to me that there are kids like me in Germany and China and France who need a machine to help them talk.