Back in the “olden days” girls all had to learn to type. Since my high school curriculum was full of academic classes, I had to take typing in the summer. We learned using the Gregg method. I never got a job where I needed to type. That’s because I was never hired after I took the timed typing test and got a word count below what was needed for the job. The timed test made me nervous and I made many mistakes, all of which reduced my count. In those days, there was no auto-correct, so all mistakes had to be carefully “whited out” with a little brush. If the paper was important, it had to be mistake free, since the white out was ugly. I used to use so-called erasable paper in college which still left a tell-tale smudge but beat having to type the whole page over.

Then, after graduate school, I never needed to type again. Until computers! Who would have guessed in 1963 when I sat in that hot summer school classroom learning to touch type that I would use the skill on a keyboard.

So now I touch type on my Mac. I can easily correct errors with the handy delete key. It alerts me if I make a mistake by underlining it in red. I don’t have to use carbon paper to make duplicates. I can push a button and a printer makes as many copies as I need. I impress all the younger hunt-and-peck typists in my life with my touch typing skills.

I miss the “ding” that the typewriter made when it got to the end of the line and needed you to return the carriage back to the left margin. If you have no idea of what I am talking about, I refer you to the You Tube video titled “Typewriter Training “Basic Typing I:Methods.” (I don’t yet know how to embed a video link)

Now if I could only get my fingers to write instant messages with the same dexterity!