While waiting for my water to boil so I could pour it into my long time French press friend for the making of coffee, the thought, clothed in appropriate imagery, strode into my mind of my teaching myself to type. How such thoughts are prompted to be born I do not know. Geezer consciousness is strange and unpredictable.
I taught myself to type in the Marine Corps. At Radio Telegraph Operator school, I had already learned Morse Code and was developing my telegraph key "fist" but was getting bored to tears (do Marines cry?), my active mind ranging like the little flashlight on today's computer screen searching for concreteness in vast foggy oblivion.
Aha! In a desk drawer I found an old 1945 olive drab Army manual (Marines were often confiscating Army gear) teaching one to type -- step by step. How proud I was to place my fingers in proper positioning ASDF JKL; on the antiquated (confiscated no doubt somewhere between the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli) machine requiring 30 to 40 pounds of finger pressure to activate a key. Ha! I was typing!
I did not trade my M1 or my radio and telegraph key for a typewriter when practicing shore landings for deep invasion. "Stay where you are or I will throw my typewriter at you!" I kept up the practice though and am pleased I am not a practitioner of the one finger hunt and peck method.
Wups! My water is boiling over. Time to come back to reality. But wait! Are not all imaginings reality?
that is so cool. Oh well, i do type on my computer keyboard with the one finger hunt peck method...but I'm fast at least and know where all the letters art. *blows on her index finger Clint Eastwood style* gotta laugh...
ReplyDeleteKathy Trejo :-D
Are not all imaginings reality?
ReplyDeletei don't know?
kathy trejo
I wonder if the "hunt and peck" practitioners are better at texting? As a typist it seems my fingers know where the keys are but my brain doesn't; finding one key at a time takes patience.
ReplyDeleteTroutbum
The one class in HS my Mom demanded I take was typing. Now I am glad she did but also remember going from an old Royal that required great finger strength to the first IBM selectric where you just looked at the keys and got aaaaaaaaaa.
ReplyDelete1910 Royal Cast Iron for 5 bucks got me through college. . . and a gallon of white out.
ReplyDeleteTruant from typing class senior year in high school. The beach of Lake Michigan seemed like the place to be. And it was.
Glad they invented computers with back space, delete and control Z options.
Hope you didn't actually throw your computer. Those cast iron models are real weapons.
In HS typewriting class, I'd strategically place a well-formed spit-wad on a type slug (the part inside the old typewriters that strikes the ribbon) corresponding to a less-often-used key. I'd hit that key when the teacher wasn't looking, sending that spit-wad flying across the room.
ReplyDeleteThis was both stealth and effective.
I was a trouble maker then. Things really haven't changed...
--Gary
LOL@Gary
ReplyDelete