I am unfamiliar with the world of interactive.

There, I said it. Cat’s out of the bag. Or maybe it was never in the bag, because most of you have probably figured this out after the repeated, wide-eyed, blank expressions that result when anyone mentions things like wireframes, scripts, or coding to me. I have absolutely no clue what anyone is talking about.

So, you’re trying to tell me that when someone says javascript, they aren’t offering me some alien variety of coffee? Too bad, I have an insatiable coffee addiction. And when Liina says wire flames, she is actually referring to wireframes and, talented as she is, cannot spontaneously combust websites online? Thank god, I don’t need the CIA on my case. Again.

I’m a writer here. Who knew I’d have to learn an entirely new language to work with interactive? In fact, after my first day here, I left the building in a state of confusion far beyond the typical bewildered fog that surrounds me. I ran straight to my trusty Webster’s dictionary, which I affectionately refer to as Big Red (unless I have to carry the thing, in which case I’m something rather less than affectionate). Believe me, it’s big. Like bigger-than-my-physics-textbook big, a feat I hadn’t thought possible prior to the discovery of this sixty pound red dinosaur at a garage sale last summer. There is just one teeny, tiny problem about my good friend, the dictionary- it was published before I was born.

This really hadn’t been a hindrance before my first day at Azul 7, when I lived in a world shrouded by the pleasant belief that websites appeared magically from thin air. However, the time was finally upon me to look up all the outlandish internet terms I’ve heard of but never understood before. Such peculiar terms as javascript and bandwidth. So of course, I turned to Big Red and searched its dusty pages for enlightenment in the form of wireframes.

I found nothing.

I moved on to scripts. A passing mention of manuscripts and old documents. I tried interactive. Something or other about human contact. At this point, I was getting pretty frustrated with my former friend. I decided to look up the mother lode- the internet.

There it was, between internee and internist: internaught.

My dependable old dictionary did not even contain the term internet. Maybe that’s why it was sold for fifty cents at a garage sale, cast off the shelf in a fit of cruelty, only to be replaced by a newer, smaller dictionary that accepted and defined our digital future. I felt betrayed and deceived by my affable giant. There was nothing left for me to do but visit the source of my confusion- I went online and quickly found myself on Wikipedia.

There amidst pages and pages of user-produced content, I found clarification and subsequently lost two hours of time. I now understand that javascript is not my precious coffee but instead a language for coding websites, and wireframes are layouts containing descriptions of a website’s functionality. So, the next time someone slides down the slippery alphabetical slope from wireframes to wire flames, not a thought of spontaneous online explosions will enter my head (Okay, well maybe just one. It’s a pretty cool idea, after all). Not only this, but I’ve learned what the ‘dev’ team is and AJ shouting “SCRUM!” in the mornings doesn’t even sound like a strange German word to me anymore.

Thus far, this experience has led me to two conclusions:

1. I’m going to get the hang of this.

2. I’m going to need a new dictionary.

Nevertheless, don’t ask me to define the internet. We’re in the process of doing just that.