the quick brown fox.

I learned to type in the sixth grade, when it was taught by a short, gravelly-voiced woman whose name I cannot recall (Mrs. Pullman? Mrs. Paxton?). We would all file into a computer lab twice a week, one of maybe three labs at my middle school. And then we'd spend the time using some basic typing program that taught us to type the letter 'S', then the letter 'A', then the words "as", "sass", and one other one that wasn't in the program, but we picked up on our own. All our typing was in lowercase, because we weren't set to learn about the Shift key for a couple of months.

Typing was very easy for me, and I flew through the lessons way on ahead of my classmates. Mrs. Whatever spoke to me in conspiratorial tones because I was clearly a gifted typist, which meant that I was destined for great things in the secretarial world, I suppose. Then, one day - it must have been either a Tuesday or a Thursday - we came in to the computer lab to find big pieces of red posterboard folded into trays that fit neatly over the keyboard, leaving just enough room for a twelve-year-old's hands. Apparently, someone or something had finally clued Mrs. Whatever in to the fact that we had been looking at our hands. She never named names or made accusations, but everyone was forced to start at the beginning of our typing program, all the way back to the letter 'S'. I felt accused and convicted, and I suspected that Mrs. Whatever acted a little more coolly to me after that, but maybe that was just my own conscience.

And so I started all over, too, and it should be noted that my pace slowed down considerably. Of course I had looked at my hands - that's what made it easy, that's how I'd been doing it the past two or three years when they'd tried to teach me in elementary school. I said that I learned to type in the sixth grade, but really I meant that's when I learned to type without looking at my hands. In any case, I finally completed that typing program, having successfully learned the keys to make all the naughty words.

I am still not very good with the numbers. Digits were taught at the very end of the typing program, when the school year was halfway over and we were all just sick of coming in here to load up the same program and type the same nonsense about quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs. And though I learned my numbers well enough to pass through the program, I never really felt comfortable with them, and every time I have to type out my phone number or address on an internet form, I find myself peering over the keyboard with two index fingers outstretched.

Mrs. Whatever (Patterson? That might be it.) left after the sixth grade and we got a male teacher whose name I remember quite clearly but am omitting for reasons which will become obvious later. He was a friendly, if rather bland fellow, and he'd give us basic assignments that were only just busy work but made the claim of teaching us proper business letter form. I don't know why they taught us how to write a business letter. I was thirteen years old; I didn't have much use for the Dear Sirs or Madams. In any case, the teacher would walk around and joke with students, occasionally massaging the shoulders of female students busily typing away. Us girls used to make jokes about it - "ew, so gross!" I don't think it even occurred to me that he was being completely inappropriate and possibly quite lecherous until I was in college. In any case, I've discovered that one can feel quite violated by something like that, even if it doesn't occur to her to feel so until ten years later.

But now, setbacks and pedophiles and all, I know how to type. I do it for a living now, though the typing I do now is even more obscure than writing about quick foxes and lazy dogs. It's probably not the dream secretarial job that Mrs. Patterson had seen for me back when I was her typing protege, before my fall from grace when she found out my (and everyone's) secret.

My speed is great if my accuracy is only slightly above average. I can type a variety of naughty words in both lower and upper cases, though that sort of thing isn't really required in my line of work. However, numbers are frequently required, but I can just sneak a peek at my keyboard and no one is any wiser. Don't go calling my boss, telling him that one of his employees can't even type numbers without looking at the keyboard. Considering that some of my coworkers must have learned to type at the School of Hunt and Peck, I don't think it will much matter.