Selectric Youth

 

One of the more amusing tales in my family lore is how my younger sister got a trip to Hawaii for high school graduation. When I turned my tassel, I was given a typewriter. On the surface, this might seem like a gyp, or at least a gross disparity. Truth be told, I’ve spent many years feeling short-ended, while my sister has used this anecdote as Exhibit A in her on-going case that she’s the favorite child. 

My mother is practical, and a typewriter seemed like a practical gift for a college-bound son with an affinity for writing. College professors will require type-written papers, she noted with my dad’s corroboration.                                                                                                                                            

In addition to practicality, my mother also believes in quality. As such, this was no ordinary typewriter.  I received a Brother ML300 Dictionary model.  For its time, it was top of the line.  It had quiet keys, a preview window, and a built-in dictionary that issued a soft ping anytime a word was typed that it didn’t recognize.  Hence the commencement of the ongoing pissing match as to who or what has the better vocabulary (what do you mean ‘hoodrat’ isn’t a word? Stupid machine.)   It also had a correction feature.  There was a snap-on keyboard cover and a suitcase-style handle.  It was essentially an ancestor of the Mac Book.                                                                                                                                       

My sister’s prize arrived as much through serendipity as anything else.  By the time she graduated, our parents were divorced.  Our father had won the trip at a corporate function and subsequently gifted it to my sister, with my mother serving as chaperone.  Tropical paradise or not, my dad wasn’t about to be away from the office for a week.  I was still living at home, and my consolation prize was getting the place to myself.  I bought a case of Samuel Adams (Brewer - Patriot) and set up my stereo and guitar equipment in the living room. 

Since my sister graduated a few years after me, the variance in gifts was deferred.  At the time, I enjoyed my Brother ML300.  I was starting to write short stories, and found they looked much better typewritten than in my doctor’s scrawl in a spiral notebook.  It was also a good way to reinforce my typing skills.

As I mentioned, my mother is practical.  She began harping on me to take a typing class from the moment I reached middle school.  When eighth grade enrollment was afoot, I was again nudged toward a typing class.  Surprisingly my father agreed, and I enrolled. 

The typing classroom consisted of thirty small desks and office chairs.  Each desk was equipped with an IBM Selectric II.

The IBM Selectric was the business machine of the 1970s and 1980s.  Offered in non-descript colors, and paramilitary construction, it was 35 pounds of limitless creativity.  Flipping the power on and watching the element bolt into position and settling into a soft hum launched a world of possibilities.  Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be 28 words per minute with 14 errors.  That was my apogee.  

The arhythmic popping of 30 typewriters at the hands of 8^th Graders made the room sound like the world’s most inefficient secretarial pool.  Fortunately, baffles had been placed on the walls to keep cacophony contained inside the room.

You didn’t get your knuckles rapped with a ruler, but you were called out and told to install your cardboard keyboard cover.  There was nothing discreet about this.  However, it was difficult to get a poor grade in Typing.  It was prestidigitation gym class.  Doing the assignments and trying to improve was enough.  And there was no homework.  In those days, it could not be assumed that students had access to keyboards at home.

My typing instruction was interrupted by a mid-year move to a new state, a new town, a new school.  My transcript reflected success, but my fingers did not.  I managed to delay a return engagement until my senior year, when my mother, still practical, put her foot down again.

I got more than I bargained for.  In addition to a traditional typing class, I was enrolled in a business core where I got office machine overload.  I had a computer class and data entry which involved more typing, and the essentials of ten-key.  The latter was a breeze.  It’s in my DNA.  My dad was an accountant, and the fastest, most accurate calculator operator I’ve ever seen.  If ten-key was an Olympic sport, he would’ve collected more medals than Michael Phelps.

Working independently, we were given two weeks to complete the ten-key workbook.  I finished it in two days.  For the next eight days of class, I sat at my desk in grandiloquent indolence.  Others would ask me to confirm the rumor that I’d finished, which I proudly affirmed.  It was the pinnacle of an epigone high school career though it didn’t provide the social capital I’d hoped.  A girl from the drill team seemed to be impressed, but it was short-lived.  How do you parlay such a meretricious accomplishment into amorous appeal?

I wasn’t exactly accomplished, but I was competent when I unwrapped and set up my new Brother ML300.  As it was after graduation, school was out, and I took to composing almost compulsively.  Short stories, essays, and polemic takes on current events and societal trends were my preferred topics.

As I mentioned, my typewriter had a corrective function.  This was a roll of tape that lifted the errant stroke from the page.  It was a great feature but an absolute bitch to install.  One summer morning it got the best of me, and I punched a hole in the wall next to my desk.  In the next couple of years, I took up hockey.  Due to errant pucks shot into the garage, I became pit crew efficient at patching drywall.  At that time, however, I lacked the skill and simply masked the hole. I covered it with a Post-it note with Proverbs 14:29 written on it. “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”  My mother saw this and responded with a smile.  She thought I might have finally turned the spiritual corner.  She tapped the yellow square of paper in affirmation, but in doing so, felt the hole in the wall.

“What happened here?” she asked.

“It’s called ‘irony,’ Mother,” I hissed.  “It’s a literary device.”

Working late into the summer nights, I produced my first novella, You’re the Worst, Hoser Lopez.  This was a stylized omnium gatherum of tales my sister shared with me from her school. Likely libelous, though reliably amusing, I realize this doesn’t sound highbrow—nor was it.  However, one doesn’t simply jump into an essay chronicling my intense rivalry with a truck driver at the Q*bert game at a local convenience store.  It takes lots of practice to spin that kind of yarn. 

However, by the time I got to college my typing had improved markedly.  Practice seldom makes perfect, but it can propel one toward competence.  As a writer, it is nearly impossible to imagine that I once wrote essays in long hand. 

These days, I spend a disproportionate amount of time with my fingers hovering above home row.  Typing is very much a part of my everyday life.  I’ve seen professional colleagues employing the hunt-and-peck style.  It’s painful to watch and gives me a petty sense of superiority.  It really was a life skill, and one I’m glad to have acquired.

As she usually is, my mother was right.