The typing class

I guess many people have questioned my sanity with Monday’s post all because I passed out an Honest Scrap award on Labor Day (normally a day of rest for many) while creating a ba$$-ackwards post that forced you to laboriously (ha) figure out what the honest crap was going on.

Let me assure everyone on this point. You are all belaboring (hee, be-LABORING, that’s a good one) under a misconception concerning my sanity. I never claimed any of you were sane.

Wait . . . is that how the old cliche goes? Oh well. It sounds good to me. I merely write what appeals to the masses: sick in the head, off-color (or full color - whichever way you prefer to think of yourselves) surliness mixed in with a little of the perverse.

And speaking of “sick in the head” . . . no, I already told you. I accept all of you as who you are. As I was saying, speaking of “sick in the head,” I have an interesting story to relate.

I’m stealing this idea from Lime over at House of Lime. She took my award rules to heart and wrote a very fascinating story concerning her ten honest things and our shared name (she’s a Michelle - with TWO “L’s” - too). She talked about the time when she was seriously ill in school.

Her incident reminded me of something that happened at my high school.

In ninth grade (1990), taking shorthand/accounting/typing classes was mandatory for all students. Half the semester was dedicated to the shorthand and accounting part. Basically, the only lessons I took away from it was to write the words “with” and “the” as “withe.” That’s all I remember. Of the accounting, we studied how to fill out checks and balance our bank books. It wasn’t a class a student could really flunk.

Then we moved to the typing part.

Hot. This is the first memory I have. We moved from a pleasant air-conditioned classroom to a sweltering Gobi Desert tent filled with thirty old-fashioned typewriters. Why we didn’t just learn how to type in the cool computer room on machines that knew what century it was, I never found out.

With the click-clacks resounding in the room, our necks had muscle cricks from facing our typing books on our right. We experienced carpal tunnel syndrome from having to hold our wrists locked in the same position for 40 minutes. Sweat dribbled down our foreheads and smacked the keys to help our typing fingers. The teacher stood at the back of the classroom, sitting on the windowsill enjoying the refreshing breeze and blocking the Santa Ana winds from cooling off the rest of us. One day, it happened.

Melissa sat in the row beside me. During the period, her head kept bobbing up and down like a woozy pogo stick. Her eyes had a glazed shininess on lenses. Yet her fingers continued to type on automatic during the month’s worth of endless repetition, ignoring what the rest of her body was doing. Then . . .

THUD!

She lay on the tile floor, completely out. I glanced over, my fingers STILL typing, trying to get my own mind to focus through the swelter to wonder why Melissa was allowed to have a nap time. I avow to this with one hand raised and the other pressed against my chest over my heart; NO ONE immediately comprehended what was going on. That was how heat fogged everyone was.

Finally, a student sitting in front of Melissa went to her side along with the teacher. By this time, she was slowly regaining consciousness a minute after hitting the floor. The teacher helped her to the nurse’s office.

Left alone in the heat, the students’ fingers continued typing. Click. Clack. Click.