Five winning stories will be selected by a panel of judges, and the winning entrants will each receive an Amazon Kindle 2 as well as Dragon NaturallySpeaking upgrades for three years.
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It was a rainy Tuesday morning. I was about forty minutes into a two and a half hour drive to a meeting when I received a text message reminding me quarterly reports were due by 9:00am. It was 8:10am. I had a meeting at 10:30am. To get this done I needed to pull over at the next exit or hopefully a rest area (with a bathroom due to my incessant need for coffee and its consequences) turn on my laptop, type the report, email it to the Divisional VP for approval, haggle over interpretation, and finally submit it in under thirty minutes.
Fifteen minutes later with no sign of an exit or a rest area I pulled over as far as I could in the break down lane, turned on my computer and began typing. Then, without warning, blue lights. Apparently typing reports in the break down lane is frowned upon. “For emergencies only”, I was told.
I was going to protest. This was an emergency. Instead I drove off, laptop in the passenger seat, staring at me expectantly. It knew I needed to get this report done and it waited.
The next exit was five miles down the road with a “Food, Gas, and Lodging” sign pointing to the right but neither was visible from the exit so I just pulled over in the grass and, needing to get rid of the coffee, jumped out of the car and ran into the woods. When I came out the cop was there again.
“There is a gas station about a half mile on the left”, he said. “They had facilities.” I half smiled, nodded and then waved him off. The rain was harder now.
I got back into my car to a ringing phone. It was my wife. Can’t talk I said, and then I quickly explained my predicament. I promised to call when I got back on the road.
I quickly reviewed last quarters report, typed the new report, emailed it and called the DVP. He had an issue, it seemed, with everything and by the time I finished the report and sent it off it was 9:15am. I was still about an hour and forty-five minutes away from the facility and my meeting was in about an hour and fifteen. Speed, I thought, don’t cancel.
I was doing eighty-five when the second set of blue lights caught my attention. Before I even pulled over I began dialing the facility to let them know I was going to be late.
I got home around 7:00pm that night, exhausted. I had nearly missed a deadline, postponed a meeting with a very important client, got pulled over three times and received $144.00 speeding ticket and two points on my license.
My wife greeted me at the door with a green box and a kiss. “I bought this for you. It types as you talk so next time you don’t have to get pulled over”, she said. It was Dragons Naturally Speaking.