Typewriters...

There's a weird need floating in and out of my head at present...it's the need for a typewriter. I know that sounds strange, because something absolutely outdated and very hard to maneuver, that has no chance of spell-checks or backspacing (things I tend to use very often due to my quick mind) - not to mention the lack of italics, which I am very fond of - should be repulsive to me.

But it strangely isn't...which is why I feel the need to acquire a good portable typewriter. I have typewriter fonts and a word processor (Q10) that makes suitably loud and annoyingly bang-like typewriter noises when turned on full volume, but I feel I need the authenticity of an actual typewriter.

In my mom's old office, there used to be a typewriter, one of those Olympia deals. It had rusted typebars and they would often stall. As a child, experimenting, I often had to push the typebars down, thus getting ink on my fingers. I didn't really mind though, I liked to pretend I was doing serious work like all the grown-ups. Of course, define serious for a child, it obviously wasn't a very good pretend.

I would start work on what I could consider my first every short story at that age. I'd skip lunch and vehemently take over my mother's computer to start tapping away at a short fantasy piece that involved monsters, sisters, and clothes. A copy of the story no longer exists. If it did, I'd like to read it.

All kids write fantasy, I think. Cartoons, Disney Princesses, all that stuff. I'd write my first actual story and begin to dream of getting published, simply because I wanted to prove I was the smartest kid in the world, a prodigy. I felt getting famous would prove that, something that remained up until recently, though only as a subconscious belief.

Anyway, back to typewriters. No, obviously I didn't type my first story on a typewriter...I needed a word processor with a good spell checker, seeing as I tend to type before I think. Even back then...obviously. Seeing as I was only three or four years old.

The typewriter was in the area where the printers were. My mom's old office was organized like a maze of gray cubicles, you know the type. My mom's current office is more of open space. Back then, the gray walls were everywhere, gray dividers you could see over and drop things from above. Near my mom's cubicle, which was nearest the door and had its own mini-waiting area up front, facing the pantry and bathrooms. The printers were near my mom's cubicle, so I was able to totter there on my legs quite often. I loved printing stuff, a love I still have. I tend to make hard-copies of my works so I can take them home and peruse them five or six times before getting utterly bored.

The typewriter was next to the printers, and next to its distant cousin of today, a PC that acted as the printer server. Sometimes I'd use that PC to type up thing too, to print immediately. But mostly, I just fooled around with the old Olympia. I'd bang the keys for a few minutes, get tired or bored or irritated, and totter off. I don't mean the word "totter" lightly. I was fat, as a child.

Now, about ten or so years later, I'm feeling the stirrings of that childhood "bond" again. It's strange, in the age of the Word Processor, where the spell checker is king, I feel the need to steal the electric typewriter (brand Canon) from the accounting department even though stealing it isn't really worth it seeing as it as an inability to type the letter Q.

And for this quintessential quirky quixotic quack, quitting q-words is quite a quandary, a quagmire even. I can't string together P-words like pundit Pato Pokalicious did for her Profile Page. The q-words alone wore me out, looking for nouns that begin with Q.

Back to the matter at hand.

It's strange how all of a sudden I am nostalgic for an age I never existed in...the age where typewriters were all you had. It's strange how my hands, my typing style, seems perfectly formed for the furious banging. I abuse my poor keyboard terribly, though I enjoy the satisfying click that sounds as my fingers fly across the keys. That's my form of music. Still, it isn't the same with the typewriter. I may load my computer with millions of versions of free typewriter fonts, install a noise that makes my keyboard sound like typekeys when I drum on them...but it's still not the same. There's something about an image of a woman, a woman writer at a typewriter that evokes a sense of the romantic. Don't tease me by pointing me in the direction of the quill - quills are itchy and you have to constantly "mend" them - because a typewriter has a heavy sort of powerful air that an inconsequential quill does not.

Anyway, this ends my three-day (yes, it took me three days to finish this ONE post) ramble on why I want a typewriter. Nothing really makes you feel like a writer more than the tak-tak-ching! Though I'm sure I won't be saying that when I'll have to live with a bottle of Wite-out.

XOXO,
NC
Gypsy