The Diary
Part Ten
Today I got started on my project. It was really interesting. I spent about three hours just walking around New York and attempting to blend in. I wonder what Mom would say if I told her that I was walking around New York all by myself. Would she be upset or would she be okay with it? I can’t help but think that she wouldn’t be too happy. So I guess I won’t tell her until it’s all over. She’s going to have to deal with me being on my own eventually…I mean I am sixteen now, I’m not a kid anymore.
Anyway, back to the project. It took me awhile, but I finally picked out three people. First one was a girl my age. I picked her because I wanted to see if the way she lives is really different from the way I live. It probably is. I followed her home (invisibly of course) and found that she lives in a tall building with a man and a woman who appear to be her parents. She also has an older brother. They don’t have the whole building to themselves, which was what I almost thought at first. Her family has only about five rooms set aside for themselves, and one of them is designated to be hers. Her bedroom doesn’t look that much different from mine. It’s got a bed and a dresser and a desk. The main differences are that hers is on the fifteenth floor of a building and mine is on the ground. She also has a lot of big pictures on her walls that I can’t figure out the reason for just yet. They’re of people, mostly boys about our age or older, and their names are printed in big letters underneath or over their pictures. Her room also has a lock, which I never had a use for.
The second person was a guy who looked about as old as the first girl’s father. I guess about forty or so? I’m not good at guessing ages, especially not human’s. I saw him getting into one of the yellow vehicles – called taxis I think – that is always zooming around the city. I wanted to see where the taxi went so I followed it and it went to another big building. I figured the man was going to his home, but this one wasn’t the same kind of building as the girl lived in. Instead he went in and sat at a desk and wrote on a lot of papers. I wasn’t exactly sure why. A bunch of other people were also in the room, sitting at desks and writing on papers. Sometimes a machine next to their desks would make a ringing noise and they’d pick it up and talk into it. Then they’d put it down. I found out the machines are called “telephones,” but I’m not sure yet exactly what they do.
The last person I picked was an old woman. I think she might be at least a hundred years old, but she looks older. She has gray hair and wears glasses. I think her name is Miranda, because that’s what the person living next to her called her. She lives in a building similar to the girl’s, but she only lives on the second floor, and she lives with an old man. I think he’s her husband. Their rooms are filled with pictures of younger people that I guess are their children. She has a cat and a bird also, though I’m not sure why. Sometimes she talks to the bird, and she sits and pets the cat a lot. She also reads, cooks, and knits. Her husband spends most of his time sitting on the couch staring at a box that shows pictures on it. The box is called a television, I think. That’s what the woman calls it, but he calls it a TV. Sometimes he tells her that the bird is chirping so loudly that he can’t hear his TV. It has sound along with the pictures, too.
I think watching these people is going to be fun. Colin said that he found his three people, too, but he wouldn’t tell me about his so I didn’t tell him about mine. It’s kind of silly, though, I was hoping to read about his.
Today I discovered the way that humans in the city learn. And I discovered some of what the real purpose of the TV is.
I’ll start with the girl I’ve been watching. She went today to a big building with a lot of other people about her age. They were all dressed alike. All the girls wore blue and green skirts, and all the boys wore pants with shirts and ties. A bunch of other girls talked to her for a while and I found out her name is Maggie. Sort of like my name, but not quite.
She spent the day walking to different rooms in this building, called a school. She listened to the teachers talk and she read and wrote in books. Halfway through the day they went to a large room and sat and tables. Some of the students ate food they’d brought in brown paper bags, and others stood on line to pay for cooked food. Some of them weren’t too pleased with the cooked food, so I wondered why they paid for it.
There were a few more classes and then the students went to another large room. This one was empty except for some basketball hoops on the wall. I’d never seen them before, but I’d read about them a few times. I wondered if they were going to play basketball.
Before they went into the big room, though, they went into a small one. The girls all went into one and the boys went into another. Then they changed into shorts and came out into the big room, called a gym. They didn’t play basketball, though. They played a game called soccer. They all ran around the gym kicking a ball and trying to get it into some nets that were set up at opposite ends. Then they went back into the smaller rooms and changed back into their original clothes.
After that Maggie went back home, so I went to Miranda’s to see what was happening. She was cooking a big turkey in the kitchen while her husband watched the TV. I wasn’t too interested in the cooking of the turkey, so I watched to see if I could figure out what the TV was.
Miranda’s husband sat on the couch and pushed a button on a small rectangular box. When he pushed one of the buttons the picture changed. A lot of different pictures showed up. One was of a man sitting at a desk. He was telling about what happened in the world. There were scenes from a war and there were pictures shown from New York. Some of the places they showed I had been to. I wondered how the pictures got into the TV. I’m still not sure. There were also pictures with people talking. The people were taking to each other and then they went different places and talked some more. It was pretty boring, especially since I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. The other pictures shown were of people sitting at desks. One man who must have been like a teacher would ask a question, and then one of the desks would make a noise and the person at the desk would answer the question. If they got it right they moved on to another question. If it wasn’t right then another person would try to answer. I think it’s pretty neat because the people watching the TV could get lots of information and the people on the TV could show how smart they were. I’m still not sure how they got in the TV but I guess I’ll figure that out eventually.
I didn’t get to look at the last guy today, but he was probably just writing papers again. Boring. I’ll follow him around tomorrow.
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