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Lorraine Carpenter in typing class at Aldergro...

Lorraine Carpenter in typing class at Aldergrove Highschool, British Columbia / Lorraine Carpenter participant à un cours de dactylographie à l’école secondaire Aldergrove, Colombie-Britannique (Photo credit: BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives)

Does this title ring any bells for any of my readers?  I don’t remember my typing teacher’s name, but I certainly remember her voice, which managed to screech with every letter she called out.  You’d think her beehive would have softened the sound.  “Accuracy, girls!  And boys too, I suppose.”  Ah, she was a charmer.

It used to matter, how fast you typed, how accurate you were.  In the days of carbon paper and white out.  Oh, the excitement of electric typewriters, and the white out ribbon! I love to look at the old typewriters, have an excellent, artsy photo of one, and one of these days I’m going to find the perfect old manual in an antique store, at a perfect price, waiting for me to bring it home and display it.  But I don’t miss typing on one.  It was slow and often painful, needing to hit each key with the same amount of force, keys getting stuck and invariably getting my finger hammered trying to unstick them.

You can imagine my pleasure when someone refers to writing as typing.

Misprints

Misprints (Photo credit: eldeeem)

Flower Child, “Mommy, are you finished typing yet?”  Husband, “I thought you were still typing.”  Especially since I do associate Husband with literal typing.  He went to college with my brother.  I typed several of their papers.  After one particularly long and hideous paper, I had a PTSD type reaction for years after whenever I had need to tap out the word acetaminophen.

The past few days have thrown my writing schedule way, way off.  I think my last post here on Mrs Fringe was the last semi-coherent thing I wrote.  First I had the mother of all migraines, laid me out for a full day, left me dizzy for a second day.  Yesterday I had a meeting during my usual writing time.  I’m most productive in the mornings.  It took too many years for me to figure that out, opposed my image of myself as writ-ah, tap tap, tapping away during the night.  Turns out I’m in fine company, plenty of respected, lauded writers and writ-ahs work in the morning. Not least of which was Hemingway.  Ah, the lore and lure of Papa.

I thought I would get back to work today, but no such luck.  Flower Child was sick.  Can’t get lost in fantasy land when you’re watching the clock to call the doctor’s office for an appointment.  OK, done.  I thought I would have time to get a few pages done, but the more days I’m away from the manuscript, the longer it takes for me to get back into my characters’ heads, and be productive.  One page.  One page and then it was time to take her to the doctor.  In the pouring rain that didn’t stop. All day, drip, drip, squish.  Luckily, once we were there, I got to find out in addition to an infection, FC has lost two pounds.  Aargh!!!  Two pounds is way too much for a kiddo who literally has nothing to spare.

Right now, I’d be ok with a few uninterrupted hours to practice my typing.

A monkey typing

A monkey typing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

16 comments

  2. Oh my. Proto-fascist typing teachers. Mine had a beehive too, and red lipstick that looked plastic. She was fond of saying “There is one right way, and ONLY one right way.”

    She was also my homeroom teacher, and she signed up the class for a paperback bookclub deal, one where you could get about a zillion books for one dollar.

    I ordered the most books of anyone in the class and with that order, I discovered science fiction which was my main reading squeeze for years after that. Andre Norton, and I believe the title was Ad Astra. Teacher did not approve of my choices but what could she say? It was her idea after all and I was the readingest kid in the class.

    Mrs F, sorry you had a rough day. Hope Flower is better soon.

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    1. Typing teachers were a special breed, weren’t they? But I love that she had your class sign up for a book club. Scifi or not, I’m not surprised you were the readingist kid in the class, I suspect that’s true for many of us 🙂

      Thanks for the good thoughts!

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  3. Typing Teacher: Sister Barbara Marie
    Words typed per minute: I don’t recall.
    Exempted from the typing final due to my awesome speed and accuracy: priceless, but, who’s bragging?
    My typing skills today: Thank goodness for spell check.
    -FC needs a hug from me! 🙂

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    1. Ooh, exempted from the final? Your fingers must have been a blur!
      When I bought my first laptop, I paid more attention to the feel of the keyboard than anything else 😉

      Welcome to Mrs Fringe, and I will pass on the hug 😀

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  4. I had a couple years of typing in high school on an electric one and grumbled the whole time I’d never, ever need the skill. Now I have a hybrid method with a few fingers on each hand that astounds my children, who are also having to learn to “keyboard” the correct way, as the class is now called haha.

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    2. LOL, I can see it now–but I can also see the hybrid method coming in handy when the kids were little, balancing a toddler with one hand and typing with the other. 🙂

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          1. I can’t even tell ya how many times I had the Empress on one side and the other hand helping boy #2 on the potty (ingenious as he was, he decided he HAD to potty train when she was a month old. o.O ) Of course, the Empress was so …dedicated… she could probably have attached herself to me like a little monkey, no help required by the time she was 6wks old. 😀

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