Notebook

Pulling my cap harder down over my head, I walked into the Notebook Fair.

The reserved susurrous of a thousand notebooks humming filled the air, punctuated by the seemingly spontaneous exchanges between eager students and harried salesmen. Discarded flyers floated to the ground like uninterrupted snowflakes, their purposes fulfilled.

I walked the length of the hall, and finally reached a booth where three laptops, all hailing from competing brands, caught my eye. Oh, what things of beauty they were.

Their LCD screens shone like the faces of innocent youths besotted with love, their glistening keyboards tantalizing to the touch. Their mice, oh their mice, radiant like trailing comets in a midnight sky. Which human heart could bear to resist their temptation, even for a second?

A gruff salesman materialized next to me. "Do you have the money?" His eyes, though impatient, still betrayed an intrinsic kindness worn thin only by the proceedings of this long day.

I laid out the entire contents of my pockets on the counter. Scruffed up dollar notes recently rescued from greedy piggy banks, a few sweets, a yo-yo, a ball of twine.

"This all I have, mister."

As the salesman cautiously prodded my worldly belongings on the counter, a ghost of a grin escaped his serious mask of a face. "Son, which of these notebooks do you have in mind?"

I didn't even need to think. The salesman followed the direction of my pointed finger, and his gaze settled upon an IBM, quietly purring away in a dusty corner.

The surprise draped every word in his reply.

"Son, no, you don't want that one. No, that notebook is ugly. If you'll notice he's got a poor exterior design, and hardly looks as good as the others. He'll never be able to indulge in the world's beauty with you."

I smiled, and removed my cap from my head, revealing the lines of stitches across my face where the plastic surgeons fought valiantly in vain.

Where the hand of man could not interfere, to make my features less prone to frighten little children, stainless steel plates had been grafted onto my skin.

"Trust me, mister. I want that notebook in the corner."