CHAPTER 1

There was one common thread in my early experiences that I kept running into - things were remarkably different on Gizmok.  At least different than what I was used to. Everything looked different, smelled different, tasted different, and functioned differently - not in a bad way, but not what I expected.  

I’d look at something that reminded me of an Earth thing. I expected it to do what the thing that it reminded me of, but turn out to do something entirely unrelated to what I thought it was for! So, I sometimes ended up trying to write with a kitchen utensil, or dig in the backyard with a loohdis. (That’s a tooth brush to you Earthlings)

That alone got me into more trouble than I care to count. 

The worst times I had though, was in school. I had to learn all kinds of things that everyone else already knew! Every day I dragged myself to the school house, plunked myself down at the desk, turned my translator on, placed an electronic pad thingy in front of me, and held my breath, wondering what the translator would screw up for me that day. 

Seriously, that translator was almost the death of me. The trouble was, there are so many words in both languages that sort of mean the same thing, but not really, that it drove both me and the teacher nuts!  

I’d ask for an explanation on my computer - that’s what the pad really was, a little mini-computer - and the translator would use a word like ‘de-code’ instead of ‘explanation’! That changed the question into something else completely! The teacher would ask why I’d want to de-code the whole device. Then I’d have to try and explain what I really needed, and the darn thing would re-word it to say something else entirely. It went from ‘explanation’ to ‘decode’ to ‘excise’ to ‘defuse’.  

Finally, my teacher was convinced I wanted to blow up the translator which, after I thought about it, I wouldn’t have minded doing at all!

I was determined to learn the language fast so I wouldn’t have to put up with this nonsense. But, in the meantime, I was stuck with it.

There were a few days in the beginning where my mom learned real quick not to ask me how school went that day. I was pretty prickly. On the plus side, my vocabulary grew out of necessity, which was a good thing, the silver lining and all that.

Soon enough I learned the floogese language and things got a little easier. But until I did, that translator had to stay on the desk. It continued to subtly mistranslate almost anything I said.  

I finally got around it by listing all the relevant words that I could remember, until the thing got the right floogese word that I needed. The conversations were a little strange, to say the least. 

To the rest of the kids in the classroom, it was a constant source of entertainment, and I made a lot of friends that way. It was another silver lining in that black cloud of deadlocked conversation between Teacher Snilk and myself.

Later, I heard he’d retired soon after I graduated from his class.

CHAPTER 2

I had to learn things outside of school too! After a while it felt like I was in school all the time, and I thought I wasn’t doing very well.  Truth was, at home I was doing better than I thought. I discovered it was a little easier, and at least I was having fun too!  Unfortunately, I was the only one having fun. The others? Not so much.