Be Happy Anyway

Be Happy Anyway
From Brave Girls Club

Thursday, August 26, 2010

You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

My friend MJ was reminiscing about typewriters and word processors. While I was typing a response I figured it was long enough for my own post....

I learned to type on a manual and an IBM Selectric II. We had to take turns using the electric typewriters then since there were only two or three in the room. I remember finding it so hard to push down those manual keys. My chair was in a corner and I was surrounded by three football players who loved to torture me, the class geek. The Vietnamese typing teacher would shout, "MEEESTOR STEEEEVE TAAAHMIS, WOULD JU PLEEASE CALM DOWN!) Maybe that's why I am such a fast typist now (so I could get my work done quickly and get out of there.) My elementary students think it amazing. "Mrs. Victory, how do you type without looking at the keys?" LOL. If they only knew.

Note: I still remember those boys and run into them occasionally around town. All three graduated to become police officers. I actually dated one. Imagine that.

In college I used my first computer, but it was only to input numbers for a number crunching program in a statistics class. (Hated that class.)

My parents bought me a very nice Brother electric typewriter that would erase the mistakes you made on the page just by hitting the backspace button. It just lifted the ink off the page! I went through a lot of correction tape. My brother got the one that would show you what you typed before you hit return. Spoiled kid! :-)

Upon graduation my first real job involved data input, but I still couldn't type. But I got really good at pushing that F10 button to save my work.

During graduate school, I worked in a library where was I exposed to my first real computer. I got to learn WordPerfect. F10 and I became reacquainted. From that point on I became the typing whiz I am today.

MJ also was talking about research. At the library, that was my main job. I worked in the Periodicals Department. Students would come in having no clue where to start their research and would have to look up magazines in a book called the Periodical Index. The only person that was allowed to look things up on the computer was our librarian. This was before the real world wide web, a la Al Gore. She would have to log into different databases and it cost money to do it, so people had to pay her to do their research.

I laugh now at how far technology has come and wonder where the future of technology will take us. I look back at my high school self who would have never walked into a computer class. That was too high tech for me. Yet, here I sit at my computer in my jammies posting a blog just because I can.

Will we really get those flying cars? I hope not. I have a hard enough time driving as it is.

7 comments:

miruspeg said...

Enjoyed reading your reminiscing Annemarie. You always tell an excellent yarn!

Just finished watching a program on TV called "Visions of the Future" narrated by the American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

According to him you had better hold onto your hat because flying cars are part of the future!

Peg xxxxxx

miruspeg said...

Oh and thanks for sounding the foghorn if my thoughts get devoured by fog. :-)

Roban said...

Sitting in Atlanta traffic often had me daydreaming about flying cars or at the least having my own personal helicopter to hop over the traffic.

I remember those high school typing classes, too, and credit them with my fast typing skills today. My students are amazed to see me type and make eye contact with them at the same time.

I had an old Remington at home during my middle school years. That's what I used to type my very juvenile stories that I in turn submitted to my sister's magazines, Cosmopolitan and Glamour. Needless to say, they never accepted any of my submissions!

Thanks for sending me down memory lane for a moment!

MJ said...

LOL! I never had to endure those antics in typewriting class! I actually refused to take Gr12 typing because my speed/accuracy and high mark in Gr 11 typing would have lined me up to get the typing award! I may be a geek but I'm not willing to accept a typing award! (I also purposely skipped class each year if I wasn't sick that year to ensure that I wouldn't get an Attendance Award! I may be a geek but I have non-geek standards too!)

Thinkie said...

oh those flying cars will come, but probably not during our lifetime ;-)
gotta love the internet, now it's ok to be a techie geek ;-)

Anonymous said...

I love your post!Brings back memories, bad ones about typing class with a hysterical teacher, that's why I still type with two fingers...duh!
I love the internet, so much to see and find.Don't know what high tech brings us....it is going so quick!

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed reading your post. As Jeanet stated: brings back memories. Yes, I type without "looking at the keyboard" and I do it real fast, LOL! But I still like writing by hand better. I jump up and down when I get a hand-written letter and I LOVE to write with an old fashionded ink pen... Ooooh - getting old I guess. But I couldn't do without the Internet anymore... I wouldn't have met you if it wasn't there...!!!

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