The letter that arrived via snail mail was addressed in pencil. The handwriting on the envelope was childish but legible and wandered only slightly downhill. The “J” in my first name hooked backwards. I could hardly wait to see what was inside.
“dear marmie,” the half-sheet of paper said. “roses are red violets are blue, i love you and that is true, bye, P.S i hope you liked my poem, love oliver.” (I’ve added commas to indicate line breaks.)
The best part? It was composed on the manual typewriter my six-year-old grandson received last year for Christmas. It was the only thing he wanted. Santa searched and searched and was finally able to find a used one at an acceptable price on Facebook marketplace, which was a good thing because new portable typewriters are out-of-reach expensive.
Oliver has been a typing maniac ever since.
That makes me extraordinarily happy because I, too, am something of a typing maniac. I often say that the two most important classes I took in high school were drivers ed and typing, though that’s not completely true. English and History and P.E. were also important and I liked them a lot. So, too, were Biology and Algebra and Home Economics, though I neither excelled in nor enjoyed those subjects. Especially Home Ec.
I learned to touch-type in eleventh grade, the first semester on a manual typewriter and the second on an electric. I’ve been crazy-in-love with keyboards ever since. At home, I was allowed to use my mother’s portable typewriter, along with an error-fixing pencil with a rubber point on one end and a brush on the other, whenever I wanted.
Like Oliver, I received a typewriter from Santa one Christmas, though I was a high school senior instead of a kindergartner. I used that typewriter for more than twenty years, and somewhat reluctantly replaced it with a clunky desktop computer and the Microsoft “Works” word processing program. Once I finally mastered the technology, a whole new world of writing was open to me. No more ripping up and starting over on words or sentences or paragraphs or pages or entire manuscripts just because I found mistakes or wanted to say something a different way. No more rubber erasers or Wite Out or correction tape.
I was free to compose and edit at will.
The biggest thing I missed about my dear little typewriter was the noise. If you’re not clack, clack, clacking away, are you really and truly typing? My memory harkened back to mid-1970s, when I spent a summer working as a college intern for the Nashville Banner newspaper. Our big, noisy newsroom was exactly like the ones pictured on TV and in the movies. Each reporter, including me, had a large and sturdy metal desk. On it were lots of pens and pencils, a jumble of reporter pads, a land-line telephone and an enormous IBM Selectric typewriter.
And, yeah, every one of us could wedge that telephone between our cheek and shoulder and compose at the typewriter while we talked to whoever was on the other end of the line, with an always-tight deadline looming. It was every bit as glamorous and exciting as it sounds.
These days, composing at a keyboard is quieter and almost always less exciting for me, though deadlines still loom. Other things have changed, too, one of which is that it’s no longer necessary (or even correct) to hit the space bar twice after typing a period that ends a sentence. Some will argue this point with me, but I say with 100 percent confidence that they’re wrong.
I have witnessed Oliver at his typewriter. He doesn’t wedge a phone between his cheek and shoulder. He doesn’t touch-type. He doesn’t punctuate with anything except a period and rarely capitalizes. Not yet, anyway. But some day he will. And, already, he creates wonderful letters and poems.
Watching him write is a joy to behold.
(June 21, 2025)