Aleta Fairchild, a colleague at a company where I worked in the 1980s, told me an interesting story. This woman, a native of Idaho, had been determined to avoid becoming a secretary. She thought the best way to prevent that was to not learn how to type. As long as she could not effectively put fingers to keyboard, she would be ineligible for secretarial work. Aleta was undoubtedly correct in holding such a view, but it seemed unwise. In listening to her tale, I kept thinking how foolish she was to have intentionally refused to learn how to type. I know she made things hard for herself in getting through college. I also submit that even with typing skills, she could have stayed out of the secretarial rut.
(Now it may be fairly asked, What exactly is wrong with being a secretary? Some people—not just women—have forged solid careers that began with them working as secretaries. And in a tough economy such as what obtains today, having a dependable job like that is surely not a bad thing. But you have to be able to type! Countless non-secretarial office jobs require typing skills. Nor can you go far as a patent attorney, genealogical researcher, architectural engineer, etc. if you cannot type. Would it be facetious to state that professions such as garbage collection, truck driving and chicken farming do not require the ability to type?)
This takes me back to my senior year at Bryan Adams High School in Dallas, Texas. One elective course I hesitated to take was Introductory Typing, offered by a lady I will call Mrs. Jones. My reluctance stemmed not from a fear of being a life-long secretary but that it might be too difficult. I was not entirely sure I could master the QWERTY configuration on the keyboard, at least not without constantly looking down.
It was a fairly big class with five desks in a row and perhaps ten per column. So there were 50 of us in that room, clattering away on manual typewriters. Mrs. Jones was a good and experienced teacher who wanted us to strive for the proper balance of speed and accuracy. She forbade us to glance at the keyboard as we typed sample words, sentences and paragraphs. I adhered to this policy, although I had some trouble consistently hitting certain keys with my little fingers. And the top row, of numbers? Forget it. I had to look.
I probably made a B in Mrs. Jones’ class. I knew then that what I had learned would serve me well when I moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas. College students had to write papers, and their professors refused to accept anything not done on a typewriter. This, of course, predates the era of word processors, laptops, iPads and so on. The papers had to be typed out, if not by the students themselves then by a friend or a person paid to do the work. (A lady named Martha Ann Zivley had an office on the northern edge of campus where she typed papers, grad school applications, theses and dissertations for UT students over a 60-year period. What might she have said to Aleta Fairchild?) The value of being able to sit down and type anything from an impassioned love poem to a request that the landlord hold off on eviction proceedings was quite obvious.
When I took that class in high school, I had no specific plan to become a writer and editor. My career path evolved after graduating from UT, and as it did I became ever more thankful for what I had learned under the tutelage of Mrs. Jones.
I sometimes wonder how many keystrokes my fingers have made over the past 40 years. It must be in the multiple millions. In view of the vast amount of typing I have done, it is somewhat surprising that I have never had the slightest problem with my fingers and hands. No arthritis, no carpal-tunnel syndrome, no pain at all. I have seen people who had such problems; they had to resort to wrapping splints on their wrists, getting corticosteroid shots or even having surgery to function normally. My sympathy for them is genuine, as is my gratitude for having learned how to type back in the spring of 1971.
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