Cye.jdflk A! a! qnfwl

So: I'm IMing Caspian the other day, and I'm busy typing some witty comeback or other, and suddenly my keyboard has a mind of its own! So instead of my oh-so-intelligent comment ("I really don't think so"), what comes out instead is "C p.annf erb-y ydcbt orv".

WTF??? (which actually comes out "Drnf odc yvdaZ")

Caspian is bemused. "Well spoken!"

But no! I'm not just typing gibberish! I'm saying stuff - real stuff - you just can't understand me!

Oh, the frustration. The mosquito netting, it is back with a vengeance. I pound on the keyboard in the hopes that I will dislodge the Keyboard Fairy, who will provide magical assistance, but she appears to be off duty. I don't stumble upon the proper key combination for Stopping The Madness, either.

I try some more: "'p.yfgd, xikm ydco co or .cp"

"Hmmm..." Caspian wonders. "Are you trying to make a point here?"

At this point I realize that I am going to have to type something intelligible. So I type out the whole new keyboard, row by row... make a handy-dandy little chart, and consult it while typing out, painstakingly, with my fingers on the wrong keys: "k...e...y...b...o...a...r...d..." (figuring "My keyboard was abducted by aliens and all I got was this stupid substitution cipher" would take a little longer to type.)

All the while, demons are clawing up my insides. I whip off my explorer’s helmet, panting for oxygen. Must... say... something... intelligible! Communication must occur! I am back in Munich. It's my first week in Germany. I am overwhelmed. I cannot express myself or list my needs or buy a loaf of bread. I am strapped into a linguistic straightjacket and it CHAFES!

And then it stops. My keyboard ceases to be possessed, my chest re-expands and allows my lungs to do the same. My brain and my keyboard, they are once again on one wavelength. We laugh it off and resume our conversation. As it turns out, Caspian has - in the past - written some nifty decryption software.

And then it happens again - simply hijacks me in the middle of a line: "So instead of thinking in microscopic details, you can think in somewhat larger jdgbto!j e?gbcoZ"

And this time Caspian's ready for it. "Ha! Here we go again!"

"Cy hoyg dall.e!m p.yctns q. UGJTz" (That last all-caps bit is an expletive.)

"Why yes, Jess, I *would* like $500."

"Da! a! a! 'eidht nsqjb mvz"

"I agree, they say cash in the mail isn't safe. Better send a check."

And so on, in that vein, until the Keyboard Fairy returns from her lunch break and informs me - a bit haughtily for my tastes - that I just need to hit Ctrl-Shift to ameliorate the situation. Ahem.

So. Yeah, Adventures in Keyboarding. What's your point, Jess? My point is what was going on inside of me during this exchange: I was scared and frustrated and confused. I was a baby without full control of her vocal cords. I was a stroke victim struggling to create new neural pathways. Nothing made sense. *I* didn't make sense. The world was upside down and the only think I could think of was "don't leave ohmigod don't hang up please don't leave me alone with this thing." Which he didn't. He decided to have fun with it instead.

But still. I am a total neurotic basketcase. It's a flipping keyboard, Jess. Not an allegory of your sad ex-pat existence.