Laptops vs. Typewriters
When I was in high school, my mother insisted that I take 2 years of typing and 1 year of shorthand classes. I hated it! I told myself there was no way that I would ever have the type of job that required me to sit down and type all day, let alone take dication! I wasn’t very good at it either. I was super fast, but very inaccurate – I still joke that I type 60 words a minute with 59 mistakes.
Of course, now I’m very grateful that I did what my mother told me to do, because as a writer, I spend a huge amount of time doing exactly what I thought I’d never do – tap away on a key board all day.
This is a tribute then to the old typewriter and today’s notebook or laptop computers. (Pictured below is a Dell notebook very similar to one I own). Since I was an English major, my parents gave me an electric typewriter as a graduation present when I got my AA degree. My roommates were so impressed when I moved into the dorm with this high-tech piece of equipment. They begged me to allow them to use it on occassion for reports and such.
Years later, now as a returning college student, it amazes me at how many kids (hey, I’m like 20 years old than them so I can call them kids) have their own laptop computers. You see them all over campus, in the coffee shop, bookstore, and library.
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