The Importance of my High School Typing Class | Eastern North Carolina Now

If you want to meet girls, you must go where they are, I tried my best.

    In preparation for several of the articles, I have made some notes about incidents and experiences as memory joggers. They say that a good writer, which I am not, will start with an outline to gather his main points and then expand on it. This will provide order, organization, reminders, and clarity to his writing.

    I, on the other hand usually write in what I call the freeform thinking mode. To do that you should be able to write or type pretty darn fast. Pearls of wisdom do not linger in the mind for long and it is best to get them down on paper before the profundity evaporates. One of the best courses I ever took in High School was typing. Of course, my purpose in taking the course was to meet girls. I could hardly have taken Home Economics (does that still exist?) but typing would provide many opportunities to be in a class of females with what I thought was little competition. I was partially correct. My class, which I took in the 10th grade, was about 90% female and 10% male. Unfortunately, among the 10% male population were the brightest student in the school.

    I quickly found that girls of that age are quickly drawn to one of two types of guys. The sports heroes and the brainy guys later classified as nerds. I fell into the greaser category, which, despite the later glamour assigned to that category by the famous play and movie "Grease", was considered at the time to be the lower echelon of the social structure.

    Early in the year, I broke my right arm playing sandlot football. I could have been excused from class because of my inability to type but like a real trooper, I continued to finish my assigned class and harass the girls for dates. After the doctor removed the cast, I was assigned extra typing homework to catch up with the drills that the rest of the class had been doing. They allowed me to take one of the manual typewriters home to practice.

    Below is the original doctor bill with some alterations to maintain my alter-ego identity. Other than that, the bill is original.



    I never really got the interest of any girls in the class but I did become a fast typist. It has served me well through life. During Basic training, it kept me out of some KP duties because I volunteered to type the training roster for my training company at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga. It also earned some extra money as I also typed some of the written test and answers for the classroom sessions. It may have been one of the very first examples of "don't ask /don't tell". People who tell you that you should never volunteer for anything in the military just do not know how to volunteer.

    I can now say that after 55 years, the most useful course I ever took in school was typing. I have used it every day since. While some people will say reeding, riting,and rithmetic are the three main courses, I would put typing right up near the top.

    I later sold the typewriter for $20 bucks. Just Kidding