Wish I had never given it away. It was such a safe way to write my most private thoughts. And I could take it to the park cuz it didn't rely on electricity or internet connection.

Fact is I had to go back and make correx on this piece...no white-out required.

However, it was one of the more important skills that I took from H.S.

My handwriting is dreadful. I typed all of my love letters to my to be wife on an old Royal that would have looked at home in a WWII movie. I still have the Royal and my wife still has the letters. I have been afraid to go back and read any of them.

I took a touch-typing class in school and enjoyed building up my speed and accuracy at every opportunity.

So important when computers came in using the typewriter keyboard layout for input.

as my closing line for my e-mails.

Just like the first TV's and radios.
You had to cross the room to turn it on.

of kids whose job it was to cross the room to change the channel or turn it on/off.

I was one of those.

We had an outside antenna that we would adjust with a wrench by hanging out the window and slowly twisting the pole while listening to a sibling relaying the results of the adjustment. One of my fond memories from childhood was my father screaming from another room, "Turn that damn thing down."

then i learned how to type on a computer using m$ 5.5 . i also learned how to type on a teletype machine . had to really bear down on those keys.

I would be hard pressed to type on the old mechanical machines today, the get up an go in the fingers has got up and went. My wife typed her way through college in some pretty menial jobs. She typed too fast for the IBM Selectrics, she had to slow down so the machine could keep up. It was a miracle to behold when she was on a roll.

then she covered select letters and functions untill all the keys were covered so we would be doing blind touchtypine .

Someday, a better/easier computer device will replace the clunkers we have now.

We just don't know they are clunkers yet.

Some of it was mechanical where the keys flying up would often cross and tangle.

(on edit: i had to take typing as punishment for smoking…man, the nuns at that catholic school were savage…but thank you Sister Jamesetta)