Typing is one of the few things in life I don’t overthink. I’m not eager to change that now just because some people recently declared a double space after a period is no longer necessary. If I have to stop and think about that it’ll slow me down.
I’m a touch typist, one of the high school kids who learned to type on a noisy old manual, a torture device without letters and numbers on the keyboard. “Touch typing” was the route to speed and accuracy and was meant to assure us a future in a nice office somewhere.
It wasn’t my idea to take typing. Mother insisted. She said I’d use it my whole life. She really wanted to type, so Daddy brought home an old upright, she bought a teach-yourself book and loved it. Her typewriter traveled with our performing family through my childhood, turning every kitchen table in every motor court into her correspondence center, the place where all publicity releases and advertising copy about “The Joneses Sing,” our family of performers, originated.
I started high school in a small town in the Deep South. Typing teacher, Mr. Powell, roamed the room in his wheelchair, rolling himself up and down aisles with a long, wooden pointer-stick across his lap. In a room overflowing with the racket from many manual typewriters, we learned to listen through the clickety-clack for the squeak of his wheelchair, a warning that he was sneaking up on you. Keep typing and pretend you don’t know he’s coming up from behind. Don’t look down at your fingers, or he’ll whack your keyboard with that stick, a good hard rap, reminding us this was “blind” typing practice. He was a fan of impromptu drills, keeping score with a timer. Results were based on how many words we typed, error free, in so many minutes. We were meant to build up to a words-per-minute (wpm) speed that would be impressive on a job application.
It turned out I loved to write and I wrote best at a keyboard, I cycled through every model IBM sold, including the dreaded IBM Executive which assigned different amounts of space for different letters. Eventually I adopted my favorite, this one, the IBM Selectric, a machine I could actually lift.
These babies – fondly called “golf balls” allowed us to be even more creative with type styles. True, sometimes they’d stick when faced with a fast typist, but that was minor compared to the magic they brought.
Later my computer keyboard took over. It’s making exactly the right amount of noise as I put down these words. Even with the extra rows of symbols around the edges, I can still center myself at asdf jklsemi-colon and take off
I have an iPad. I have an iPhone. I love both of them but my thumbs do not. I’m never going to be a fast thumbs-only thinker. Even autocorrect can’t keep up with my mess. Oh sure, I can respond with emojis or gifs but only a full keyboard satisfies my need for complete sentences.
At a keyboard, my brain and fingers carry on a conversation without much interference from me. A few hours here make me feel most like myself. It turns out my thumbs don’t have a lot to say.
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Dear Anita, wishing you love ~ James
I truly love to type on a keyboard. Like you, I have to use the plodding and laborious one finger method on my phone, as I am now. But on just the right keyboard-not too lackey and a nice amount of spring-my thoughts fly onto a page. I can’t dictate my writing. Won’t try. They’ll have to pry my cold, dead hands from my beloved keyboard.
PS. “But on just the right keyboard-not too lackey…” should read, “not too clackey.”
Dave, once I ordered a new computer keyboard and received one that was nearly silent. Had to return it and get one that talks back to me a bit.
Thank you, James.
Howdy Nita Faye – I love this. I too learned to type in summer school for two summers in Junior High and when I was the last class to register as a timid sophomore in HS, only class left was second year typing! I wasn’t great, I think I got a “D”, so intimidated by HS, the teachers, SECOND YEAR typing!! But it proved to be the one thing I grasped and used as you know, working for you. I still use my keyboard on my 27″ screen all in one computer to this day, never the cell phone or pad. I am keyboarding you now. I love that I can type and fast and correctly (two spaces always!). Thanks for sharing. Between you and James Woods (I follow his newsletters), I may have to actually write something meaningful in my old age. You would love to read the stack of journals my mother kept and wrote in cursive!!! HUGS my friend.
Single space after a period? Stop and think about it before next sentence? Not gonna happen. I can personally attest to your super typing skills. I hope you do write (type) stories from your family and your own pioneering successes in Nevada and now up there in the wilds. And you have those stunning clips from wild game cameras for inspiration.