Day 238, November 9, 2020
Learning to Type
Today's Soundtrack: The Ron Carter Quintet, Jazz San Javier, 2009
I used to think of writing like playing an instrument. I suppose that harkened back to when I was working more on typewriters, but even the older computer keyboards were more mechanical, more musical, than the modern flat things I flit over today. I have read about gaming keyboards that are famed for their mechanical qualities, and are often backlit with color changing leds... perhaps I'll look into one of those at some point.
It is funny to think back at how resistant I was at learning typing. Back in my freshman year of high school there was still the remnants of a secretarial program where two faculty taught the rudiments of shorthand, typing, and I do not know what else. I always associated them with the home economics departments, cooking classes and sewing, and maybe even the wood shop and craft courses, but I imagine they would have objected. The short hand instructor I remember (incorrectly, I am sure) as the crabby stenographer from the television show, Night Court. I never took one of her classes. The typing teacher was thin, dapper man, who dressed impeccably, in comparison to his colleagues, and wore stylish saddle shoes.
By the time I was a freshman in high school, computers had already permeated our world. I learned to program on a Timex Sinclair that saved the painstakingly typed programs onto a standard audio cassette tape. I learned to navigate the world of Castle Wolfenstein using the wonderfully tactile keyboard of Bernie Rhee's Apple II, which stored data on floppy discs. And using my own Apple IIc, I monopolized the phone line dialing into BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) reading everything that titillated a young pubescent boy (it is funny that the politicians were fearful of heavy metal music and rap).
All through my computing early years, I managed to type somewhat proficiently using the fewest fingers possible, sometimes using only the pointer fingers of each hand. I was actually pretty fast, as long as I could also look at the keyboard and see what I was doing. But my freshman year of high school, which coincided with my burgeoning rebelliousness (faux hawk, smoking, Dio, drinking, and other recreation), also brought along the required high school typing class.
In order for you to have the appropriate vision of this memory, one needs to picture a fairly large classroom, larger than average, a bland linoleum floor, fluorescent banks of ceiling lights, and a wall of windows. In this room, the typical class of 36 students could each be seated at an individual typing desk equipped with an electric typewriter and a typing textbook, the kind that opened over the top, like a notepad so you could prop it up on a typing stand and copy various letter formats and engage in timed touch-type exercises. It was exactly the kind of class that raised my ire. I felt like it was an anathema to my sensibilities as a thinking person. When my peers suggested we skip class to go lay in the grass or on the sun warm, giant track and field landing mats, if I had typing, I readily agreed.
I was a miserable typist. I hated the rote copying of memos, silly sentences, the formatting of letters that would never get sent. I hated that I wasn't supposed to look at my fingers. I hated the passion the teacher exhibited for typing, like he was having us run drills in the gymnasium complete with whistle. I think I remember a whistle, but maybe I'm making that part up.
In any case, I do remember, on a day when I was not skipping class, I arrived to class early and in a sudden fit of inspiration (I was reading Jim Morrison's autobiography and Woody Guthrie's journals studying how to be a trouble maker), I went around the class emptying a box of Smarties into all of the typewriters. These typewriters predated the golfball type and still had the typebars/strikers that swung up to hit the platen. It was traditional for each class to start with a timed type where they teacher would call out a page number like he was preacher on a pulpit directing us in a hymnal, and we all dutifully flipped to that page, inserted a sheet of paper, and as he started a stopwatch, everyone would hammer away gleefully until he called for us to stop (or blew a whistle?) and we counted how many mistake free words we typed, if any.
On this particular day, at the start of our timed type, a cascade of colorful candies flew through the air. It was glorious. Perhaps it was as much a figment of my imagination as the whistle, but in my memory Smarties flew through the air as the teacher waved in shock and dismay, landing all around his white and black saddle shoes.
The funny thing is, despite my staunch resistance. Despite me getting a special report sent home for marking in the teacher's mark book (I know it isn't an excuse, but everyone did it when one day he stepped out of class and left his grade book on the table... we all ran up and checked off assignments as turned in). Despite all that, I somehow learned how to type--my fingers seek out the little nubs on the F and J, though I swear they used to be on D and K. I can type with my eyes closed. I can type while reading a book. I can type while watching Ron Carter play a bass solo. This teacher, taught me how to play my instrument. I feel bad that I can not remember his name. I imagine very few people returned to the high school to visit him and thank him for providing them with the most utilized tool from their high school education.
I imagine it must have taken a special kind of perseverance to be a typing teacher and to do so with such verve. I cannot help but admire him for that. The mid-1980s were not kind to anyone that did not fit in. That included young Korean boys, and sprightly typing teachers. I hope that he survived the transition to keyboards at Digital Corporation terminals with the green monochrome monitors. I imagine it must have been a disorienting time to teach secretarial skills. When we imagine the transformation that occurred in the workplace and in education, there is perhaps no starker example, at least in my lifetime (aside perhaps from the science teacher who used to pour mercury on a tabletop to demonstrate its properties as we all crowded around in awe), than what happened with secretarial skills. Even so, it is the skill I use every day of my working life.
Who knows what will be the typing of the future... that incredible skill... that aspect of knowledge that then opens the door to unimaginable possibilities? How could we know what that will be? Nobody knows, except perhaps for that teacher or professor who has dedicated their life to that one thing. Of course, it was probably self evident to the typing teacher that typing, even if taught on nearly outdated electric typewriters, was the skill of the future. It was the high school equivalent to "plastics" as mentioned in the movie, The Graduate.
So, for all the teachers, who in addition to teaching Romeo and Juliet for the countless time, who are helping one more student multiply fractions, or indoctrinating yet another generation with United States Revolutionary War history, here's to you and the long term impacts you make on each of us.
Incidentally, just this weekend, while raking leaves, I was remembering how my wrestling Coach Dave Baldanza taught us all how to sweep and mop (we had to sweep and mop the mats before every practice), and that I carry that knowledge with me through to today, though I am perhaps not as proficient with a mop as I am with the keyboard.
Take care,
Leo
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