by Vincent Scuro
As I drifted off to sleep on the night of March 31, I wondered what tomorrow would be like. I knew I had as busy a day ahead of me as the one I had put behind me — more so than usual, because I had to write this month’s “Here’s a Thought.”
The next morning was a bright, sunny day. I sat down at my PC ready to begin.
Suddenly, I noticed that something was terribly wrong.
The “A” key on my keyboard was missing.
I ran my fingers across the keys in disbelief.
Who would steal an “A” key? I thought.
“I can’t find one of my keys,” I called out to my wife.
“Which one?” she asked. “Car key, house key?”
“No, none of those,” I said.
I thought, How can I write “Here’s a Thought” without the “A” key? I’ll never get past the name of the column.
Realizing that stating the obvious was getting me nowhere, and not wanting to lose the writing moment, I asked my wife if I could use her computer. After booting it up and opening her word-processing program, I typed in “Here’s a Thought” and the column title, and then spaced down and entered my byline.
As I tried to enter the page number, I discovered that her keyboard was missing something.
“Did you know that your ‘P’ key is missing?” I asked.
She didn’t.
Suddenly, I found myself in the middle of a mystery.
Not much in the mood to solve a mystery, I was feeling like a writer with a technological version of writer’s block. I suppose I could have typed my column on the old manual typewriter I keep in the closet, but then I’d have to use paper — a very nongreen solution to the problem — and re-enter everything on a computer that had a fully operational keyboard — if I could find one.
Without an “A” key, I certainly couldn’t use my computer, and not using the letter “P” on my wife’s computer wouldn’t be prudent or practical. It probably wouldn’t produce publishable prose either.
I was in a pickle.
That thought made me hungry.
I got in my car and drove to a sandwich place on Restaurant Row.
When it was my turn to order I asked, “How’s the roast beef today?”
“You can’t have that,” the sandwich-maker said.
“You’re out of roast beef already? How can that be? You just opened a little while ago.”
The sandwich-maker pointed to the sign behind her.
“See the sign? It’s missing the letter ‘R.’”
Sure enough, they had oast beef, coned beef and tukey, but no roast beef, corned beef or turkey. And I couldn’t get a croissant, raisin bagel or cinnamon roll — or any kind of roll for that matter.
None of this was helping suppress the growling in my tummy, because my tummy can’t read.
Seeing my dilemma, the sandwich-maker said, “Do you need more time to decide? We have other items on the menu. We just can’t sell anything with the letter ‘R.’”
“Yes, I could use more time, but in the meantime, may I have a diet cola with plenty of ice?” I asked.
The sandwich-maker shook her head.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t have that either.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Our letter ‘I’ disappeared, too, so there’s no ice.”
“Wow,” I said, still wondering what I was going to eat and how they were going to keep things cold. Without “R” and “I,” no one would be able to find the fridge.
I thought about ordering ham and cheese with lettuce and tomato, but then I noticed they were missing the letter “L,” too.
This was very discouraging.
“Why don’t you try a supermarket?” the sandwich-maker suggested.
“Good idea,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll have food.”
Man, was I ever wrong.
When I arrived at the supermarket, its normally stocked shelves were conspicuously barren.
“What’s going on here?” I inquired, confident that I was not going to like the answer.
The store manager pulled me aside.
“When we got here this morning, the letter ‘F’ was missing from all of our signs.”
“No food?” I asked. “Just ood?”
“It’s worse than that,” she said. “We’re missing our letter ‘O,’ too.”
Sure enough, when I looked around at the signage, all of the “F”s and “O”s were missing.
Frustrated and overwhelmed by the day’s events — and it was still early — I drove to the library, hoping to find some answers and solve the mystery of the missing letters. When I arrived at the building where the library was supposed to be, I noticed something missing from the sign out front.
It read “ibrary.”
There was no “L.”
This is no good, I thought. I won’t be able to solve the mystery of the missing letters in a place that’s missing letters!
Then again, they say the best place to hide a book is in a library.
Perhaps I was being hasty.
Suddenly it hit me.
There had to be at least one place where I would find all the missing letters.
They would be in the dictionary.
After locating a dictionary, I flipped through the pages.
Let me see, I thought. The keyboards were missing “A” and “P.” The sandwich place was missing “R,” “I,” and “L.” The supermarket was missing “F” and “O.” And the library’s sign was missing the letter “L.”
I began jotting the letters down on a piece of scrap paper.
A … P … R … I … L … F … O ...
Before I got to the next letter, I woke up.
“Rise and shine,” my wife said.
“Huh?”
“You’d better be careful today.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Don’t you know what today is?” she asked. “April 1.”
She showed me the calendar.
“Read the fine print.”
Without my glasses, I couldn’t read it.
“Nevermind,” she said. “But look out for that big hairy spider on your pillow.”
Finally, realizing what day it was and relieved that there was no spider, I laughed.
Then, I got out of bed, went to my office, and sat down at the PC to write my column.
As I looked at my keyboard, I noticed that someone had put masking tape over the “A” key.
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