Touch my Nook

It was a Christmas present, my new Nook.  I found out later that the very child I had made fun of for going out shopping on Black Friday had, in fact, waited in line for a very long, long time at a local store to buy a Nook for her mommy, at a very, very good price.

All that and a gift card to fill it!  And didn’t I feel like a horse’s ass for teasing?

I immediately mess it up play with it, in the process downloading what I found out later was a very naughty book veiled as a romance novel.  It amounted to poorly written erotica.  I read skimmed it and wished for a red pen the entire time.  Don’t these people even edit?  Or attend church?

I figured out how to find the good books, the really good books, and managed to blow through my gift card in under seven minutes.  I also had several books pop up in my library that I didn’t order.  In chatting with a friend later, I discovered that she too had a couple show up in her Nook, uninvited, right around the time she had gone into (rhymes with Smarms & Coble) where there is wifi, as opposed to her home, which is wifi-lacking.

She went back in to Smarms & Coble to find out why these books were downloaded into her library and wouldn’t you know it, those books were gone.  Missing.  She was unable to find them anywhere in her Nook and hadn’t pushed any buttons to remove them.  Now, my friend is not a stupid person and has not begun seeing things that aren’t there.  Yet.

However, the skeevy bookstore employee obviously decided to have a little fun with her.  

Friend:  Hi, I was just wondering why books I didn’t buy are being downloaded to my Nook? (Hands over Nook)

Bookstore:  (scrolls through her Nook library.)  You must have downloaded them.  Or someone lent them to you.  But they’re not in here anymore.

Friend:  (grabs Nook back, pages through) What the…They were just there!!! 

Bookstore:  (shrugs) Well, they’re not there now.  Next customer in line?

Friend:  Now, wait just a damn minute.  I can barely download books I want, much less lend stuff I didn’t buy!

Bookstore:  If they were ever even there (smirking) I’m thinking maybe that’s exactly what you did; you lent them to someone.  You can do that, you know, lend your Nook library to someone.  It’s in the directions.  That’s probably what you did.

Friend:  (voice is rising a little bit) I didn’t lend them to anyone!  I just got this thing, and I can’t work it; what makes you think that I am so technologically gifted that suddenly I learned how to share my library with someone?

Bookstore:  I’m just saying you probably touched your Nook to someone else’s.  Did you touch Nooks?  

Friend:  (gasps) I’ve never, even seen another person’s Nook, much less touch them together or let someone touch mine!  I’m not that kind of person!

Bookstore:  You had to have touched Nooks with someone.  It’s ok; we all want to see what other people’s Nooks look like.  It’s human nature.  Some people cover their Nooks with special decorations and some people just let them be au natural.  (Giggles) 

Friend:  (quietly, defeated) Mine has a light on it so I can use it in bed.

Bookstore:  Oh, a party girl, huh? 

Because I was laughing so hard as she related that story to me, I hardly heard anything past “touching Nooks together.”

Wait…I think I already downloaded that book.

 

originally published in The Life and Times of Poopwa Foley