Monkey See, Monkey Do

Boss got me an iPad. And the angels sang.

I was a little ambivalent at first, after hearing all the hype about Yet Another Thing With Bells And Whistles, the possible redundancy (MacBook is too big, iPhone is too small, and the third porridge was just right?), and the awkward size (do I carry it in my bag? In the rain? Do you do it on a train?). Not to mention the unfortunate Kotex connotations.

But, sure enough, iUnderestimated the magical mind control that is Apple, and once this thing is in your hands you don’t know how you lived without it for so long and then no no I’m listening to you I can listen and type at the same time there’s actually an app for that wait come on man I need it what do you mean 10% battery remaining DEAR GOD I NEED MORE TIME. Heroin, essentially, peddled on a virtual street corner by Steve Jobs, bundled up in a sleek, sexy, smug little package that’s really more like a candy wrapper than a carrying case and have I mentioned that we’re in love and registered at Crate and Barrel?

The iPad also makes you say crazy shit like, “Look at this Shakespeare app! It’s free! And it has all his plays! I can read any of his PLAYS anytime for FREE!” when you vaguely recall using the enormous volume of his plays as a makeshift iron in college, and besides, hasn’t that ramby, tangled Old English secretly kinda pissed you off since high school? Or, “Look at my Supermarket Mania app! You stock the shelves and pick up trash and if you’re slow the customers get MAD!” when in real life sometimes making a quick post-work and pre-taco night stop at Shaw’s seems completely exhausting. How things that sound like an absolute nightmare in real life make for giddily fun games, I’ll never understand. (I’m looking at you, Frontierville players. I’m pretty sure the actual frontier was sorta exhausting. Also, those bonnets.)

So they organized a training for the havers of the iPads in my district, which Boss attended. While our relationship has been mostly good, she’s usually only around for dire situations as opposed to day to day stuff, so we’re sort of conditioned to fear her, or at least associate her with chaos and duress. It’s not even entirely her fault, since the gist of her job is to run around putting out fires. (No, I’m not a firefighter. You’re so literal. But pretty. I’ll excuse it this one time.)

So, seeing Boss triggers a bit of the fight or flight response, but I tried my best to squelch that this particular day. It should’ve been an endless day in a stuffy room because that’s what all trainings held by every company since the beginning of time are required by law to be, but it was actually very interesting, bordering on damn near inspiring, because one of the Apple guys came out to get us all fired up.

Toward the end of the training, the Inspirational Apple Man paired us up to do a quick project. I was matched up with Boss because of course I was. As far as I know, this is a woman who communicates in questions that contain two words at the absolute most (“Goals met? Making progress?”) so I wasn’t sure how an actual conversation with, you know, sentences and prepositions would play out.

The directions for the longest 20 minutes of my life were to imagine that we had to assemble an exhibit for a zoo animal, the purpose basically to illustrate that we can use the iPad for many a purpose: pictures, media, text-to-speak, oh my. Boss and I chose a monkey for our zoo animal. Inspirational Apple Man said that wasn’t specific enough, and Boss narrowed it to white monkey. Okay, sure.

We turned toward each other, me with a hesitant smile, her with the unblinking eye of evil, and I suggested that we start by googling our animal and progress from there. I typed in “white monkey,” expecting:

And saw…well. See for yourself. The third hit, specifically.

All right, Urban Dictionary. First? Big fan. I’ve learned so much from you. But…BUT. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. While I appreciate efficiency in all its forms, and while I do typically prefer curiously named sex acts to be explained to me in extensive detail, preferably involving Power Point, in this particular situation I would have been MORE than happy to have had to click on your site to get that helpful nugget of information, rather than have it pop right up on the screen.

But no. There it was. THERE IT GODDAMN WAS.

Of course Boss saw it. When something like that is on your screen, who would bother to read about white monkey tea, apparently a Chinese delicacy?

There was a beat, during which I had a nervous breakdown. She said, “Good Catholic girls don’t talk about things like that.” I wanted to reply that even dirty chicks don’t usually talk about that, but why split hairs.

Instead I said, “Um. Why don’t I try googling white monkey at the zoo?” which had much more churchgoer-friendly results.

And shortly after that I used my iPad to spell check my resume, ultimately proving the point that there really isn’t anything that little piece of technological wizardry can’t do. Aside from help you hold onto your job and dignity, of course.