I will forever remember this conversation I had with my mom in the spring of 1983. My schedule for my sophomore year had just came out and I was showing her the classes I had signed up for.
“Right here. This one. It will be the most important class you take.” I was taken aback because she said it so quickly and confidently after only looking at my paper for a few seconds.
“Geometry? Or Spanish. Definitely geometry but mom, I hate math and I barely pass.” She laughed looked and said, “typing class.” Excuse me, what? Typing class? My mother never drank but surely she had been on this day.
“Typing class?” I said with a voice as if a monster was on the other side of the door in a dark house. “Yes, typing class,” she replied with that mom voice that all of our mom’s have and you know whatever argument you put up, you will lose.
“Mom, typing class? Please tell me how that will help me when I get out into the real world.” I said that with as much confidence as a Kardashian filling out a job application. “Trust me, son, it will. You will be able to use your typing skills the rest of your life and it will be so good for you to know it. You will go to college, hopefully, and will have to type papers. A lot of them. Then you graduate, hopefully, and in your line of work, it doesn’t matter, you will need to know how to type.”
How did she know? How could she have been that confident that typing would help me out in ways I cannot fully describe? She knew immediately that class would be the most important one at McGavock for me. She didn’t downplay that other classes were of no value, but only that typing would be of the greatest value to me.
I have friends that hunt and peck on the keyboards and it makes me laugh because had she not instilled in me how much typing I would do in my life, I would be that person.
So type away my friends, knowing that qwertyuiop is much more than a misspelled word. Much more.