Computers are for Namby Pambys

I'm sitting here at my desktop computer while I listen to the sounds of Haley "typing" away at her research paper on my laptop. The little pitter patter of her fingers on the keyboard sounds nothing like typing did during my research paper days. We typed with a real typewriter - you know, the authentic manual kind.

Typewriters back then were evil. You had to be a REAL typist to tame these bad boys. There was no room for mistakes - you had to get it right the first time! None of this namby-pamby backspacing or hitting delete keys!  To reign in the manual monster, you had to first make sure the ribbon was still good (not twisted or used up). This ribbon was made of some kind of thin fabric coated with black ink powder or something. When a ribbon was used up, you had to replace it with a new one, which I don't think I ever really got the hang of. If your ribbon was good, you inserted the paper by placing it behind the roll bar and manually turn the roll bar dial to get the paper lined up where you wanted it. A bar with rubber rollers held the paper down for you (isn't that sweet?). Then the brave typist would set her margins manually with little metal tabs. Mind you, all of these steps were the easy part. Now it was time to start typing...

When you hit a key on a manual monster, little metal bars with raised letters would slam the black-coated ribbon against the paper and leave an imprint of the letter. Groovy, huh? Now, what set an AUTHENTIC typist apart from these modern-day KEYBOARDERS was the problem of correcting errors. You had to be very accurate, or you'd waste a great deal of time trying to cover up your mistakes. We had white-out paper that you could use to correct errors. This was a little rectangle of paper with dried-up white-out on it. You would back space over the letter you typed incorrectly, place the white-out strip between the black ribbon and your paper and strike the incorrect letter again. The letter bars would imprint the white stuff over the bad black stuff and your mistake would disappear (sort of).  Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Then there was the problem of accidentally striking two letters at a time and getting the metal letter bars stuck together. If that's not enough of a pain, when you came to the end of a line of type, there was no "return" key - you had to reach up and push the carriage bar to the right to manually line the paper back up on its left margin.

I remember our first electric typewriter. We thought Star Trek had come to town! By the time I was in high school, electric typewriters were used. Maybe one day I'll tell you about my typing instructor, Mrs. Ivory. She was unique in her own right. By the time I got my first job, we had genuine, bonified word processors! Boy, had technology come a long way!!!!! My kids would get a kick out of those antiquated old things!

You know, these new fangled computers and printers make "typing" so much easier, but I really miss the distinctive sound of a manual typewriter. It made a wonderfully rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack - pop - ziiiiiiinnnnng! And the typewritten page just looked so much more interesting back in the day. The spacing was sometimes imperfect, and the letters weren't always lined up just right. Some letters were darker than others, depending how hard you struck the keys. There was something unique about every typewriter - it gave the writer a "type" of fingerprint, so to speak. Yep, you had to be a real he-man or she-woman to tame one of those manual monsters, but the experience was unforgettable.  I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of those once again, for old time's sake...Those were the days!