Old Typist

I admit it, I'm a baby boomer.  I learned to type on a--wait for it--typewriter!  It was the kind where you had to use your left hand to move the carriage to a new line.  Our teacher kept the room frosty cold (crisp, he called it), and corrections had to be made with a type eraser--the kind with a little brush on the end.  Many years later I had a bunch of those erasers and the students thought they were so clever, though obviously they knew nothing about their original use with typewriters.

When I went to work in the office of The School of Arts and Letters at the college, I was really in fat city.  They had an IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter.  I got good enough that I didn't even watch.  It was like my hands could tell when I had made a mistake and they automatically backed up and corrected it.  Cool.

It wasn't until I had started teaching that I got to know computers.  Slowly and gently I changed from "typing" to "keyboarding."  Thankfully, the keys were still Qwerty, so I didn't have to relearn everything.  I had to discard the key that allowed me to go back, lift off, and type over, but much was the same.  

But, for whatever reason, some quirks have stuck with me.  I cannot explain why I want to spell about with an extra a--aboaut.  I do it almost every time.  I also tend to put a k in front of p.  I just did it when I typed spell--skpell.  I often change the order of letters in words, especially "the," and I'm forever exchanging one small word for another.  I just typed "work" instead of "word."  

Unfortunately, my hands don't always recognize my mistakes and if I don't proofread carefully my writing might be quite confusing.  

Thankfully, word processing programs make corrections easy to do.  Otherwise, I'd be covered in eraser dust all the time.