Living in a virtual world has been a struggle for many of us Baby Boomers. Struggling with my new website and working on this blog, I questioned why it was so hard. I looked down at my keyboard and it all came spiraling back—back to the dark ages of typing in 10th grade.
The year was 1974; I had never been exposed to a typewriter before. The first problem became clear as soon as I sat down at my desk and confronted the clunky, boxy, metal machine. All the letters were out-of-order on the keyboard! Being a visual learner, the alphabet misplacement caused my brain to rebel. “This is not right!” it said. Not only that, I’d need to build up muscle strength in my fingers to shove down each key hard enough for steel rods to spring forward, press their corresponding metal letters against an inked ribbon, and hopefully leave an accurate imprint onto a piece of paper. I am not the most coordinated. I found that out in tryouts for basketball—I lasted one day. I never dreamed typing on a manual typewriter was a sporting event involving the correct finger pressure and manual dexterity to go from key to key.
The first day we learned the base keys (the left hand, f d s a and the right j k l ;). Over and over, we did these typing drills. Each week more keys were added to the assortment making it possible to type real words, then whole sentences. My neck hurt from switching back and forth from the typing book to the keys. Mr. Edwards, the typing teacher, noticed my head action and added a new rule. “No looking at the keys. Eyes must remain on the page at all times.” To make matters worse, he went to his desk and pulled out the evil egg timer. Dear God no!
“You have ten minutes to type the sentences on page 21. This will be graded by correct words per minute. Go!” he ordered.
My brain completely malfunctioned. I was overwhelmed trying to remember where the letters were positioned, keeping my place in the text, and fearing Mr. Edwards as he observed my progress. It didn’t help that he was an attractive man not many years out of college. I still remember the terrifying first practice sentence: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Surrounded by the sounds of rapid, frantic clicks of twenty-eight other typewriters and the general watching behind me—I felt like a soldier trapped in typewriter warfare.
It seemed the timer rang before I had hardly begun. I looked over my paper. It was pitiful. “Count your correct words and divide by ten,” was Mr. Edwards’ instruction. “Correct words” was my undoing. I managed a whopping ten. My piano-playing friend easily managed sixty and never broke a sweat. I stopped taking business classes thereafter, assured typing and anything associated with it wasn’t for me. For the next twenty years I lived in a perfect world….
But in the 1990’s in a faraway land of virtual reality, a keyboard processed a warning: I am coming. I will take over your life— your fingers—your mind will yield to my power….