My very classy French computer

Along with losing both my job (oh, yeah FYI that happened) and my self-esteem, I recently suffered another blow that only confirms for me how much the last few months can go kiss it – the loss of my laptop.

To confirm, I did not actually lose or misplace my laptop. But it pretty much died. To spend money on repairing it as opposed to just buying a new laptop would be so ridiculous that the computer people I took it to flat out refused to fix it.

I was telling my brother about having to buy a new computer, when he told me, in a magical, life-and-wallet-saving way, that he had a laptop I could take. Apparently, one of my brother’s old roommates, a French girl who was only living in NYC for the summer, left her laptop in the apartment when she moved back to France. On purpose. “I don’t need it anymore.” Who knows. My brother had a friend check it out and clean it up and was debating selling it when I came along. So he gave it to me. And I was elated.

And then I learned about this thing called the European keyboard. Specifically, the French keyboard. Look closely:

RIGHT?

Here’s the deal. I have long since ceased needing to look at the keyboard in order to type. I type at around 95 words a minute and definitely don’t do it via the hunt-and-peck method. And my brother reconfigured the laptop so that the keyboard actually corresponds to an American keyboard, even though what is actually listed on some of the keys suggests otherwise. So while the keyboard above shows an “A” in the upper left corner, when I press it it shows up as “Q,” as it does for most of you.

The main issues are the enter key, which you’ll notice is a completely different shape, and the left shift key, which is about half the size of the American shift key (and is also, I suppose, not called the shift key). I apparently hit the shift key all the way on the right side, because NOW when I try to type a capital letter it comes out looking like “/arielle” instead of “Arielle.” The enter key also does something wonky but I’m currently composing this post on my work computer to save my sanity, so I can’t replicate it.

You know what else is crazy? Trying to set a new password for a website. Because while I type quickly the rest of the time, when I set a new password I do it very slowly and very deliberately so that I make sure I’m doing it correctly. To look at the keyboard and slowly press keys that are mislabeled is a CRAZY TRICK TO TRY AND PULL OVER ON YOUR BRAIN.

But I can’t really complain, because….free laptop! It’s just completing adding a new element of ridiculous to my life.