Typing, and a letter from June 26, 1987

The classroom was lined with desks covered in IBM "Selectric" typewriters. They were beige-colored, but dingy, especially around the bottom where the greasy palms of teenagers who were learning to type rested as they learned. Our teacher taught us how to feed in paper and correctly position our hands such that our left index fingers touched the "F" and our right the "J".

We'd then do exercises to try and teach our brains to hit keys without looking at the keyboard. S, S, S, S, A, A, A, A, D, D, D, D. Now, type the word "sad" over and over and over again until an unconscious connection is formed between your fingers and your brain.

Many of my classmates hated typing and saw no use in it. Our high school divided students into three "tracks." Those in the "secretarial" track learned to type with gusto. Those in the "college-bound" one grudgingly learned because they were warned that their future would include typing long, academic papers. The final group, the "trade" or "general" track members, pecked at the keys in a desultory fashion and waited for the waste of time to end.

No one could have imagined that, decades later, we'd all be spending a good portion of our lives in front of keyboards no matter what our careers ended up being. I was in the "college-found" track, but I embraced typing with more enthusiasm than anyone in the room. I loved the idea of getting words out faster than my hands could write them in cursive. My brain was always miles ahead of my hands and this helped them catch up just a little bit.

My mother picked up an ancient typewriter at a yard sale for a few dollars and I would practice at home by typing out what I thought were the lyrics of KISS songs. When the keys weren't jamming up or getting stuck, I was typing "I was vaccinated with a rip-torn needle because I'm hooked on rock-n-roll" from Peter Criss's solo album. I couldn't understand that he was singing "Beethovan" so I just made something up without concern for it making absolutely no sense. That was not unusual because I often didn't understand KISS's lyrics even when I could clearly understand the words. They spoke in so much innuendo that my naive 14-year-old mind couldn't comprehend.

I rarely typed Tito letters because I usually wrote to him at work and had to walk down to the basement office in the residential home and liberate the only typewriter in the office from the secretary's space. Dragging that heavy thing up to my office area was more effort than I generally wanted to go to, but I did bother on a few occasions. This letter (edited to remove some names, but otherwise intact) was the first one. Much older and more mature me cringes a little at how cavalier and snarky I was about my clients at the time. However, it was a hard job and I think many of us joked about the work because it was either that or cry. (As always, click on the small pictures to load a bigger version.)