Raise your hand if you ever took a
typing class in high school. One or two hours a week dedicated to tapping keys
in a windowless room, all girls except for two boys in the back row. I was of
the Hunt and Peck variety, which meant I sacrificed speed by glancing away from
the copy to find and press each key individually instead of relying on the
memorized position of the keys. I probably took the class because I thought it
would have something to do with writing, not transcribing at record speed. Nevertheless,
it came in handy in college when I stayed up all night to finish term papers—the
ding of the carriage return and clickety-clack not only made good company in
the still dormitory, they provided just the right little-engine-that-could
motion that kept me on track.
In the early nineties, I upgraded
to a portable Brother electric typewriter to write a business plan for a
restaurant. At the time, it seemed harebrained—an impossible dream (I was told
many times), but once I started pecking, the words nudged each other forward—I
think I can, I think I can. And when the lease for L’amie Donia was signed (oddly
the space used to be a typewriter repair shop), we shoved a desk into the
storage room upstairs and it became my office where I wrote menus with Brother.
Downstairs carpenters hammered and drilled booths and bar tops, while I perched
in my nest hatching summer dishes for a July opening.
For our first anniversary, my
husband gave me a vintage Smith Corona (he’s never been subtle in urging me to
write). It has a nice clatter even with neighboring arms jamming when pressed
at the same time. In a crazy dream not too long ago, every key I pressed spurted
batter instead of ink on the page. With every mistake I was forced to scrape
away what looked like buttermilk pancakes off the carriage with a paring knife.
I won’t even address the symbolism here, but what a mess! Talk about think
before you write.
Brother retired sometime after my
sister gave us a bright blue iMac which sat like a spaceship on my desk urging
me to hop on board. Well, there was no going back after that, but I miss the
bell, the springing forward of words that can’t be deleted, the commitment to
staying on track. I love my laptop, but Brother never made it easy for me to
walk away, erase, cut and paste, or check email in the middle of a paragraph. And
when the day was done, you had something to show for it.
