Caveman Mentality

Lunch came quickly and Jasper slid into his class. he saw Alex struggling over her book while Scarlet was swimming through her pile of homework.

"How was the class like with Danny?" he asked.

Alex nodded. "It was fun. Danny had many stories to share, but I wish he taught the actual lessons longer. I don't understand this question at all, he didn't teach us how to solve it."

Jasper took a seat beside the Wilde princess and decided to help her while tackling the problems by himself. Alex shared with Jasper and gave a rather detailed recount about what happened in class while Scarlet quickly finished up the last few questions.

Scarlet looked at the time. There were about forty more minutes before lunch. While Jasper helped Alex with her homework, Scarlet decided to do her homework in advance1. If Danny only gave them homework based on the book, she could easily try the questions by herself and study in advance so that she has more time at the later part to focus on her writing and research.

Time flew by and the children decided to take a break. There were a lot of things to do after lunch so they hurried unpacked the lunch box that Claire packed for them. Jasper sighed inwardly at his portion. He was a growing boy and eating the same amount that the girls ate simply wasn't enough for him. Still, he couldn't impose too much on the Wilde's. The boy decided that his next stop after lunch would be the school canteen. He might make a deal with the lunch lady to get leftover food for free so that he could save some money.

Scarlet decided that the best place for her to be was in the classroom where she wouldn't be disturbed. The only downside she could think of was that there was no air conditioning even if she had internet access. According to Claire, the laptop had been configured to be automatically connected to the school's VIP connection.

As her leg was still in a cast, it was inconvenient for Scarlet to be moving around. Jasper decided to help Scarlet connect her laptop to the main powerpoint while Scarlet set it up.

It was when the laptop stalled after trying to open her document that the aspiring businessman witnessed something rare. Alex was startled by the loud noise but simply blinked when she realised where it was coming from. The blogger was usually the most emotionally stable child in the Wilde house. They never expected the blogger to completely lose it over a slow laptop and a crashed application.

Scarlet smacked the laptop again and cursed colourfully in her mother tongue. Jasper and Alex didn't know what she was saying but they had a rather good guess what Scarlet was referring to. The girl glared at the innocent machine and Jasper felt pity for it when Scarlet gave it another smack. The computer fan was whirring loudly and Jasper offered to take over. Scarlet pushed her laptop over to Jasper quickly, not wanting to deal with the offending piece of equipment for any longer.

Jasper received the laptop and couldn't help but wonder why people would resort to caveman logic when things didn't work2. The computer hung? Smack it a few times to see if it helps. The lift stopped? Jam the buttons a few more time to see if it starts again. The door wouldn't open? How about kicking it twice? Maybe something magical would happen after.

After restarting the laptop, Jasper managed to get her file to work again, much to Scarlet's delight. Alex made sure to make her sister comfortable before she packed her bag. The other two students excused themselves and Scarlet waved goodbye. She wasn't worried. They promised to be back around three to go back together. The curfew was six in the evening so that gave them plenty of time. If it weren't for Scarlet's lessons with Ms Connor at four, they would have stayed until about five before heading home.

Once they were gone, the blogger pulled out her manuscript file and drafted plots. She was seeing Ms Connor this afternoon for a discussion and an informal interview. While Scarlet liked Debbie, she wasn't sure if she trusted the lady with her work. In fact, Scarlet felt very unconfident about what she'd written. It wasn't like an essay. It was actually a lot harder when the story became not just an essay, but a whole book.

Scalet's book wasn't long, but she learnt several things writing her very first book. Firstly, naming anything was hard! It didn't matter if it was the name of the character or the name of a place, they were equally tough to decide. Thankfully, Scarlet knew quite a good number of people, so that helped her.

Secondly, Scarlet often found herself going back to previous chapters to read what she wrote because she simply forgot all about it. After the fifth time doing it, the blogger decided that it was easier to just keep a separate sheet about all the details he might ever need when moving forward in future chapters.

Thirdly, Scarlet was consulting the dictionary more frequently than she liked. It wasn't that she didn't know the spelling, The girl just wasn't sure if it was the right word to use in such a context. Also, there was something called a thesaurus - no that isn't a dinosaur. Scarlet often consulted it to find word replacements that she didn't know existed. However, that led her to the fourth problem.

She simply never had enough time.

When trying to tell her story, Scarlet found herself taking more than giving in the knowledge exchange. She found out that birds flew because they had less dense bones and that also meant their bones were very fragile. Scarlet tried to find out more about making it possible to walk on a rainbow and somehow she ended up the legend of the rainbow with the pot of imaginary gold. More interestingly, the rainbow was actually a circle and not a semi-circle like what most picture books illustrated.

Being a writer was fun but Scarlet didn't know if she was good enough to be one. Her story was more like a word vomit from ideas all over the place. Still, she wondered if Debbie was a fan of talking cats.

"No, I must not digress," Scarlet told herself and shook her head to clear the distracting thoughts. she brought the heavy laptop to school for a sole purpose - to edit her story before her session with Debbie.

The document loaded and Scarlet found herself staring at a good sixteen thousand words.

Taking a deep breath, Scarlet nodded. "We can do this," she told herself. "Let's start with chapter one..."