| General Fiction posted April 11, 2024 | Chapters: |
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The Phelps family spends a night out
A chapter in the book What We See
What We See - Chapter 31
by Jim Wile
| Background A high school teacher wrongly accused of sexual assault reinvents his life. |
Recap of Chapter 30: Alan and Ginnie get married, and Alan begins the process of adopting Tommy.
At Christmas time, he invites Callie and her cousin Abby, who is visiting, for dinner. Abby and Ginnie hit it off. After dinner, they go over to Alan’s shop, where he shows Abby his progress on the glasses. She gives him a suggestion on using a different camera that might enable it to be miniaturized further.
They all discuss how creepy Warren is, and Abby off-handedly suggests Alan set up a spy camera on him. Alan thinks of using his camcorder and vows to do it in case Warren gets any ideas about theft. He also plans to begin the process of getting a patent on his invention.
Chapter 31
Several weeks later, the certified copy of the adoption decree from the court arrived in the mail. When Ginnie and I got married, she had decided to take my name, Phelps, for her surname, and that’s what Tommy wanted to do too. We just needed to complete the application for amending his birth certificate and submit it, along with some other supporting documentation, to the Indiana State Department of Health, Vital Records Division. It was all done three weeks later, when we got his new birth certificate in the mail. Tommy Boardman is now Tommy Phelps.
We decided to celebrate this by going out to dinner and a movie. Tommy wanted to go to Mario’s in Grantham. The movie was going to be something special. At a little art theater in Grantham, they were showing the movie Das Boot in German with English subtitles. Tommy has been dying to try out the glasses in the real world. They weren’t quite ready for him to wear to school yet, but we all thought a good real-world tryout watching a foreign film with subtitles might be just the thing, and he was very excited about it. Plus, he likes war movies.
Dinner at Mario’s was wonderful as always. Before the meal came, Ginnie and I had a glass of wine, and Tommy had a Sprite. I toasted him: “To my son, Tommy, who has brought such joy to my life. You are a kindred spirit to me—that means we’re a lot alike—and if there are any more wicky stickets in our lives, we’ll all face them together. I love you, son.” I choked up as I said this, but apparently he did too.
He croaked out, “I love you too, Dad.”
“And I love you both,” added Ginnie, as we all clinked glasses.
Later, we arrived at the theater 10 minutes before showtime. It was a small theater, but amazingly crowded, which I didn’t expect. We had to sit quite close—in the second row—which meant we would have to move our heads from side to side a little to read the captions and take in the whole film.
This first prototype used a shutter release to start the filming of the words. I had taken Abby’s suggestion of using CMOS technology, which, if anyone is interested, stands for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, and its rolling shutter mechanism was just the thing for the side-to-side scanning that would be necessary since we were sitting so close to the screen. The little camera was mounted on the bridge of the glasses. Tommy would have to press the button on the computer in his pocket to begin the image capture and translation to voice, and it would recognize the end when there was no more text. He would have to remember to press the trigger each time a new caption was displayed, but he got the hang of it quickly. I hoped to be able to dispense with this trigger in future models and make it automatic, but that would come.
I glanced over at him from time to time during the movie, and he was entranced. He seemed to be understanding everything. It must have been a little disconcerting for him to hear the words spoken in the theater, as well as very close to his ears—the stems of the glasses containing the miniature speakers. It might have been confusing, but for the fact that the words were German and the translation was in English. He seemed to have adjusted to it readily.
On the way home in the car, he told us what it was like.
“Dad, I understood everything. I mean, I didn’t get all of it, but I understood what they were saying. It was a good movie.”
“I didn’t really get all of it either, Tommy,” said Ginnie. “That’s kind of the nature of foreign films with subtitles. They’re not always a perfect translation of the actual words being spoken, and sometimes the meaning gets a little lost in the translation. But as long as you could understand the translation of the written English words, that was the real test, and it sounds like you and the glasses passed with flying colors.”
“Dad, these are amazing. When can I start taking them to school?”
“Well, you can certainly use them at home, but before taking them to school, I think I need to get that patent first, and we would have to talk to your teachers about it too. I’ve just started researching what it will take to get a patent, and it’s not that straightforward. I may have to find a patent attorney to help me with it. Do you happen to know a good one?”
Ginnie and Tommy both laughed. She said, “Isn’t Callie’s dad a lawyer? I don’t think he’s a patent attorney, but maybe he could recommend one.”
“That’s a good idea. I think I’ll give him a call. Maybe he could, or at least he could let me know where to go about finding one.”
Tommy continued to wear the glasses the rest of the way home. He read street signs to us, storefront signs, and billboard signs we passed, sometimes to humorous results. The translation software had a bit of trouble pronouncing Dr. Ephraim Pszczolkowski on a billboard, and it correctly insisted on pronouncing Loser Street as Losser Street when we turned the last corner onto our street.
Tommy said, “Don’t these glasses know anything? It’s LOSER Street. For all us losers who live here.” We all laughed at that.
It had been a great evening—our first complete one as the Phelps family.
 Recognized |
CHARACTERS
Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985.
Archie: David's orange tabby cat
Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan.
Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse.
Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St.
Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street.
Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend.
Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher.
Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.
Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop.
Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985.
Archie: David's orange tabby cat
Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan.
Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse.
Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St.
Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street.
Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend.
Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher.
Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.
Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop.
Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.
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