I missed registering for the typing class at Raymond High School. Intentionally? I don’t remember.
“Fine,” Mom said. “You’ll learn typing on Saturdays.”
She meant it. Mom harrumphed me awake each Saturday for a classroom date with Beulah Mae Melberg.
I thought of Mrs. Melberg recently when reading a news article noting that just 2.5% of today’s students take keyboarding classes.
Mrs. Melberg’s class met at Raymond High but had been organized through a community college.
During the week, she was the school librarian, a friendly presence at her desk just inside the library door. She seemed old, although (ahem) she was younger than I am now.
But on Saturdays? Mrs. Melberg bestrode that classroom like a battlefield general, commanding her clumsy conscripts armed with electric typewriters.
“Don’t look at your hands!” she’d exclaim.
“What a cruel waste of pillow time,” I’d mutter, silently.
Now I’m grateful. I’m touch-typing these words now. Thank you, Mom, for insisting. And thank you, Mrs. Melberg (she died in 1982), for prodding my fingers to move ever faster.
I’ve typed nearly every day since.
More childhood memories
Fingers fly
So I learned typing as a high school sophomore (I think) in Mrs. Fry’s class at Shelby County High School. I’m not sure of my grade (especially in calculating how to center words on a manual typewriter — try that one, kids), but I learned to type quickly if not necessarily accurately. Fast forward about five years to college, when I was working at my local daily newspaper, The Hattiesburg American, and pounding out articles on an Underwood manual upright. My friend and coworker Rick suggested that we take a typing class at the University of Southern Mississippi (where we were undergrads) for an easy A. I thought that a capital (SHIFT) idea. Except that this class was in the Business school. They wanted the typing to be clerically perfect. AND the typing was practiced on brand new IBM Selectric typewriters. Can you imagine my manual fingers on an electric keyboard? They didn’t work that well. Errors abounded. My grade reflected that I never would do secretarial work. I am forever grateful for backspace, delete and insert.
You pounded that electric typewriter keyboard into submission, I’m sure. I learned on Raymond High’s IBM Selectrics. Then, for college, my parents bought me a manual Smith Corona. I pounded my way through college. I still have that typewriter. It’s boat anchor heavy. If I used it now, I’d be worn out after a couple of sentences.