44 keys to writing a life story
Lessons from a quest for speed and perfection.
For a high school graduation gift, I received a large navy blue Samsonite. Zipping the suitcase closed the night before I left for college felt like packing away my childhood. All those chances to dream, play, and wander, my audaciousness, smothered between argyle knee socks and rag wool sweaters. It was time to get serious and follow the newly blazed trail for girls. College, marriage, children, work. I could have it all.
Not that anyone asked if that is what I wanted.
No one had ever asked me what I wanted to be, and if they had, I wouldn’t have had an answer other than this—to marry Robert Redford. The Jerimiah Johnson meets Hubble Gardner version.
My mother said, “Learn to type.”
In 1978, typing class was mostly filled with girls, each of us already typing in one way or another—prep, jock, slut, band-geek, nerd, burn-out, or art-class weirdo. Our fingers hovered above the home row in anticipation of futures our mothers hadn’t had the opportunity to imagine. So, how could they point the way?
F-F-f space, J-J-J space. Back straight, eyes forward, feet flat to the floor, I transcribed the assignment attached to a metal stand by a magnet. Line by line, I practiced rote perfection. I typed until a tinny bell warned me I was close to the margin. Then, I yanked the silver handle to return the carriage to a new line with a satisfying zzzzzwack.
“Eyes on your lessons, not your fingers.” My typing teacher, Mrs. Strickland, prowled between the rows, lifting her cat’s-eye glasses from their silver chain to check our work and trailing a perfume of talcum powder and teacher’s lounge cigarettes.
When the teacher caught me looking down at the mechanical keyboard, searching for the right key to complete a sentence, when I returned to class the following day, every letter and symbol on my heavy manual machine had been covered with a dob of crimson nail polish.
Shoulders back. Don’t look where you are going, but keep going—there will be a speed test next week. By graduation, I could type 65 errorless words per minute.
I typed campus newsletters to pay for college in New Hampshire, and I typed my request to withdraw before I’d finished. I typed meeting minutes near a military base in Alaska, the diamond chips in my engagement ring glittering as my fingers worked the electronic keys with a fast and light touch.
I typed resumes, rental applications, and change of address postcards in Virginia, Michigan, and Florida. I typed newspaper copy, retail sales manuals, building supply brochures, tour boat schedules, and Avon sales receipts. I typed birthday party invitations on Little Mermaid and Ninja Turtle stationary and happy holiday newsletters. I typed my maiden name on the divorce petition.
I was still the office ingénue when I stepped my faux patten-leather pumps on the first rung of the marketing career ladder I would climb for the next thirty years. I learned to use email and the internet and to smile more. Even when my hands shook over lewd remarks brushed off as compliments and countless unwanted shoulder rubs, I kept typing.
I typed to buy the “good” macaroni and cheese, and I typed for health insurance. I typed overtime for profit sharing and night-school tuition. I typed essays on Wharton and Woolf and product launch case studies on a home computer bought with store credit I’d opened and maxed out on the same day. With each degree and promotion, I typed updates to my LinkedIn profile.
I didn’t set out to follow Mom’s advice, but it was the only direction I knew.
Over forty years, I typed my way from a small mill town in central Maine to conference rooms in Boston, San Francisco, Shanghai, and London—to the surprise of hot towels in American Airlines business class, to flashy Las Vegas events, and a perfectly poured pint of Guinness set to the thump of a bodhrán in a Dublin pub. All made possible by a career I couldn’t wait to leave.
I’ll never forget sitting behind the massive IBM Memory Typewriter at that receptionist’s desk. The machine, an always-on buzzy precursor to word-processing, magically stored a few lines of text.
Typo? Watch as the typeface ball flitters backward across the page like Tinker Bell’s machine gun—rat-a-tat-tat-tat-ding. With a touch of a button, my mistakes disappeared. I could go back in time and try again. But would I?
I once typed for speed and perfection, and I typed for money and praise. And with every mistake, I learned these things do not make a life story.
There were 44 keys on the Royal Empress manual typewriter. Forty-four keys to write a love letter, a goodbye, a fresh start—the imperfect, heartbreaking, messy moments amid life.
I’ve typed my way to an old Vermont farmhouse on a dirt road with a view of the mountains. Here I sit at 62—back straight, feet flat to the floor—with my fingers on the home row, poised to write my next chapter.
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Work hard. Be brave. Believe.
Catherine
My life coach told me once that I already knew my path, I only hadn't seen it yet. She was right. One thing leads to another and another.... Thank you for reading.
Great essay! I felt being right there, in your typing class, and at every next typing station of your life, typing along with you, writing my future steps, climbing the ladder to heights I didn't see possible... Writing is a gift, typing too. Yet, there's a time to move on and enjoy the sunshine, the view of mountains and sea, and live.