We all have things in life that we don’t like to do. Or didn’t like to do at one time.
I really disliked typing class. I had to take it for one quarter while I was in high school. I think it is the only class that I nearly failed.
Our teacher was Mrs. Cartwright. She had one of those big old jet-black, high-on-the-head, beehive hairdos. And, she had long, bright red, fingernails. The kind that looked nearly impossible to type with. You know… I never saw her type.
Mrs. Cartwritght was very slight in stature. Extremely thin. And it looked to me…. that if she leaned too far in any one direction…. that beehive hairdo of hers would topple her to the ground. At any rate…. old Mrs. Cartwright was at the helm of typing class.
She used to publicly ostracize me. Yes… she would call me a “Hunter & Pecker” in front of the entire class.
“Miss Kronenberger! You are hunting and pecking again. Do NOT look at those keys.”
To which I would respond… under my breathe….
“Call me a Pecker will ya’? Yes… well… one of these day… I am going to HUNT you down… we’ll see who the pecker is then… won’t we!? Why do I need to learn this typing-thing anyhow?”
Who knew… there would be keyboards on computers someday. Now I type like the wind. Like the wind, I’ll tell you! But it was no thanks to high school typing class.
Mrs. Cartwright used to make us type things, over and over again…. like….
“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy yellow dog.”
I would raise my hand and ask if this were a factual statement… and if so… when and where did it happen? I would start to open my mouth, to continue with the remaining questions that were swirling in my head… and Mrs. Cartwright would always “shush” me… and tell me to get back to typing.
“Eyes on the book Miss Kronenberger. NOT the keyboard.”
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So back to typing. “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy yellow dog. The quick brown …. .. jumped.. the… it could have been a red fox… . …..and what if he possibly tripped… not leapt……. and why, oh why… did the fox go over the dog? Were they friends? Or not. Could they have been in the middle of the forest somewhere? If so….. exactly what….. was somebody’s dog doing laying around in the woods? Oh this could be bad. Or was the dog on his front porch? And the fox came up to the house? Which means the people living in the house may have a fox problem. That could spell certain trouble for the chickens. And if there are no chickens… that means no eggs. No eggs means no breakfast. Oh, that will be a terrible start to the day. Everybody knows you need a balanced breakfast to get the day rolling. Heck. I’ve seen that guy in the Sunshine Suit on the Jimmy Dean commercials. I guess they could just eat their grits without the eggs… but that is sort of pointless…”
And THEN, abruptly, I would hear…. “All right class. Stop typing. Time is up. Pass your papers forward.”
I would pull my test paper from that rubber roller thing on the typewriter… and hand it up to the front. Mrs. Cartwright would look down at my results… and shake her bee-hivey head back and forth. I think she thought I was doing this on purpose.
But as you know…. I have no choice in the matter. Absolutely… no choice.
To this very day…
… that is just how I type.
“It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams… A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men.” – Johannes Gutenberg
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