The non-erotic adventures of a typing student

It was the beginning of my 11th grade year in school and when I was filling in the blanks in my timetable I realized I had one block of time that was unfilled after I had inserted all my required academic courses like English, history, biology, French (yuck), PE (double yuck) and math (yuck with festering sores all over it).

What to do? I had to choose from a list of ‘electives’, as they were called. I didn’t want to take woodshop, or metalwork, and in those days boys didn’t take home ec unless they wanted their sexual orientation seriously questioned. I wasn’t tough enough to go there despite the allure of cooking, for example, because I still had to walk to and from school.

So, I opted for typing. That was the best course decision I ever made in my life, despite the reams of academic courses I took in high school and university. I can fully say I wouldn’t have had the career that ultimately evolved if I hadn’t learned how to touch type.

My motivation at the time wasn’t necessarily to learn how to type. It was just a matter of filling in that block of time combined with the sure knowledge that a great number of females took typing. Females of the future secretary sort took typing. Females that were rumoured to be excessively easy about access to their nubile charms took typing. Females who dyed their hair and wore short, tight skirts and boob-emphasizing mohair sweaters took typing. Females none of whom looked remotely like the young lady pictured, I might mention. So, I guess you could say the illustration is gratuitous if you were so inclined.

What is true is that majority of those members of the Future Secretaries Club were more reminiscent of Mrs. Wiggins, the gum-snapping moronic steno on the old Carol Burnett Show, than anyone else. There were some exceptions. Exceptions that didn't bother looking at me since I didn't possess the sort of car and bankrolls their hoodlumish boyfriends could boast of. I was out of the running in my sexual conquest designs.

I registered in the class and there was just one other guy. I don’t remember his name but I recall he devoted much of his time to munching sunflower seeds and spitting the shells all over the place. He was also a big, slobbish, kind of dumb guy, so he was not going to be any competition in attracting the attentions of any libido-charging females who might deign to give me a glance.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I struck out royally with the budding secretarial students of the female persuasion, and I also kept flunking my speed and accuracy tests. Then, one day it dawned on me that I didn’t have to set any speed records; I didn’t even have to pass the course. It was an elective and wouldn’t be added to my aggregate grades.

So, I mainly coasted and grimaced as the dude next to me spat another sunflower seed towards the front of the class to show his contempt for the rather shrill female martinet (martinette?) who ran the class.

At the end of it all, however, I did learn how to type, and the skill has never left me. I could type in my sleep. I can do ‘air’ keyboard. And that skill carried me through university because I never had to pay anybody to type out my term papers or be forced to do the old one-finger or two-finger scramble.

Ultimately, as a reporter and columnist it served me quite brilliantly. I became with practice an efficient, fast and accurate typist to the degree that I could take down a story on the telephone and not even glance at the paper (in the old days) or the screen, and I would know most of it would be right.

So, I say to any young person who is looking for a course to take in school, I would almost insist that he or she learn how to type. Furthermore, if the young person is male, he might just have better luck with the females in the class than I did. But, if he does, I don’t want to hear about it.

Did anyone out there take any particular course that served them better and offered more unexpected benefits than all the others did?