Donkeys & Typing & Elephants, Oh My!

Sometimes - too often, in fact - my posts tend to be on the long side. There's a perfectly good reason for that, and you're about to read the long version of it. (There's another reason, too, and it has to do with poor editing skills, but that's another post.)

When I was a senior high school student, our school offered a few night courses, one of which was touch typing (typing without needing to look at the keys). My mother suggested I take typing; I don't know why, because computer keyboards were still a long way in the future. Maybe she was just trying to give me a marketable skill, although she never said so. I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school; all I knew was that I didn't want to be a nurse (too much blood and vomit!) or a teacher (too many children and too much noise!). So I took the typing course, and enjoyed it. It was a bit like playing the piano, and it was fun to be able to just type along and produce rows and rows of neat sentences, a huge contrast to my childish and awkward handwriting.

When I finished high school, my mother expected me to go to university to further my education*, and not having a strong leaning toward any particular major, I decided to take secretarial administration, which was a little bit further up the pay scale than a high school secretarial course would have been. All was well for the first few weeks. Then I got bored. And maybe worried. Because I couldn't see myself being outgoing enough to do some parts of the job for which we were being trained - the part where you have to deal with people a lot.

* (Let me just be honest here and say that I was pretty much lacking in ambition and get-up-and-go. I did very well academically but I was a dreamer and a reader and younger than my peers, and all I ever really wanted to do was have babies, and raise 'em up. This concept WILL come up again later. I realize also how fortunate I was to have a mother who kept pushing me, even though it was like trying to push a piece of string in a straight line . . . very, very hard and frustrating. I love and admire my mother for doing that, as I was too stupid to do it for myself.)

I'm an introvert. A bit of a social introvert, but still an introvert. Being an introvert wasn't going to make me a very good administrative assistant, what with all the greeting visitors and answering the telephone and arranging meetings and appointments and travel arrangements for my future boss and so on. I decided to try an accounting course on the side, and, if it went well, to switch to business the following year. I kept my typing and business English courses because it seemed like they'd be handy no matter what, and also because by this time I was past the no-penalty withdrawal date and I would've gotten a Fail in them and that was just ridiculous because I was finding them easy and helpful and even dare I say fun.

Fast forward a few years and I had discovered that bookkeeping was the kind of job I felt most comfortable doing, and at that time bookkeeping was done with typewriters (to create invoices and cheques and to type financial statements) and big old ledgers that were filled in using a pen and your own little hand, old timey style.

And then I dropped out of the workforce to have babies* (see preceding bit). My husband and I had agreed early on that one of us should be at home to raise our children, and that one was me. Remember, it was my dream job. But eventually the kids got older, as kids do, and it was getting to the point where I wasn't needed as much at home. As it happened, with impeccable timing I must say, I got a call from an acquaintance asking if I was interested in casual work with his accounting office.

But YIKES while I was busy at home for twenty years, bookkeeping had moved into the computer age. Instead of a ledger and a pen, I had a keyboard and software.

How lucky that I had typing skills, too. Typing is like riding a bike; you never forget. And I've come to like doing bookkeeping and a whole lot of other things on a computer. Especially as my handwriting gets worse and worse the older I get.

So now I type and type and type at work, and then I type and type and type when I come home. I keep in touch with people by email, I type everything longer than a grocery list, because it's easier. I write (for myself and my blog). I can't keep up with my thoughts with paper and pen; I NEED a keyboard.

But the downside is the tendency to be long-winded, because typing is so easy.  There is no cost to me, none of the searching for letters on the nonsensical qwerty layout, no hunt-and-peck that makes many people think twice before typing a sentence.

My question for you today is: How do you type? Are you a searcher, a hunt-and-peck person? Have you learned to use two fingers nearly as fast as someone who uses all ten of them? Or do you touch type, with the words falling from your fingers at 120 wpm? Do you think your method affects your writing? Your thinking process? Your editing process? And do you have any editing hints? Have you ever used a non-qwerty keyboard layout? Do you wish I would stop asking so many dang questions??? That's a fair point :)

Hope you have a good weekend, my people :) Here is an elephant joke to maybe make you smile:

Q. What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino?
A. Elephino!

(Hint: Say the answer out loud. If you're still having trouble, check below the picture, way down.)

What my mom probably felt like she had to do to get me educated . . .

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(Elephino = "Hell if I know" )