Marco Polo? Meet the Typewriter.

 My dear friend Caitlin told me about it over a Marco Polo.  If you don't know what 'a' Marco Polo is, even though you know 'who' Marco Polo is, it just means you're not young, or young-at-heart, or some other cliche' that indicates how not-young you are.  

Marco Polo, an app that allows you to video text with friends or family without the need to be live or have matching schedules, was a pandemic bright spot.  It's like leaving a video voicemail for someone, and they're free to look at it whenever it's convenient for them.  You can get to the point, including tone, very quickly rather than pouring over text messages trying to say just the right thing.  That might be something I do that no one else does.  Anyway, I like it.  I plan to continue using it.  It's how Caitlin and I primarily stay in touch.  Something will happen that I know she'll appreciate, I turn on the app, tell her about it, and move on with my day, excited to eventually hear her reaction.  For more pressing things like what time are we meeting at the thrift shop in Vienna or which one of us will be the one to ask that we push back that time, an inevitable running joke between us...actual texting or <gasp> a phone call is better.  

She told me over a Marco Polo about this thing in Winchester where you can walk into this open, sunshine-y place and use typewriters that are set out on tables spaced out across the room.  I happen to have plans to go to Winchester soon for a mama-little guy day, so this was serendipitous timing.  Even if the timing wasn't a thing, how nice is it having a friend who tells you of typewriter events and knows that it will land as slam-dunk information?  All kinds of nice, I'll tell you what.

I still have my family's old Underwood typewriter.  I've lugged it all across Virginia in every move since leaving for college.  It's been background decor, an ongoing hum in my persona.  It has several things wrong with it and needs repair.  It's beautiful.  But I haven't typed on it, or any typewriter, for at least two decades.

The Underwood, atop another lovely pandemic find - a mid-century butcher's pantry by Broyhill, purchased from a fellow local teacher's furniture flipping side hustle.  And my first of two Matisse prints.  More about those eventually.  

I learned how to type on a huge gray electric typewriter at Andrew Lewis Middle School.  My mom was once a typist for the Salem Times Register, our local small town's newspaper, and had already given me some basics.  She could, and probably still can, type like the wind.  Between her, several years of piano, and another typing class my freshman year of high school, I got really good.  I aced every test in speed and accuracy.  I used to memorize my WPM stats, but also socially knew better than to tell them to anyone.  But I wanted to.  

I just took a 1-minute typing test.  You saw that coming. 

Good news!  I'm at 70 WPM with 96% accuracy.  Not bad for the first try in decades.  A few things to note about the test:

    1.  About 10 seconds into the test, it started trying to make a click-clack typewriter sound with every strike.  It is distracting and sounds nothing at all like a typewriter. 

    2.  It wants you to only space one time in between sentences.  My cemented flag is holding onto my two spaces, thankyouverymuch, and I'll take a 4% penalty in accuracy for this worthy cause. 

    3.  Ohmygoodness they have typing lessons you can take, sequential by key and finger movement groupings, and this is almost too much for my frequently cracked knuckles temperament to handle.  

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OK, I'm back.  

Learning to type was like learning to play piano and drums at the same time.  I very quickly connected it to the muscle memory you apply to learn chord progressions, scales, and finger exercises.  Looking at words and typing them was also a lot like sight-reading, and I was significantly better at sight-typing than sight-reading music, probably because the typing keyboard is significantly smaller than a piano.  The sounds of everyone working on the same exercise began to sound like drumline practice.  Sometimes I still look at certain words and align them with rhythm, the way it will sound when I type it.  Some words crunch together rhythmically like grace notes, while others contain forced pauses between strikes like staccato passages. This is also precisely how I became better than average at tap dancing; I learned the rhythm of the steps before the actual steps.  If there were still typing classes in schools, I'd be teaching them, de-lightfully, for sure. 

While planning the details of my upcoming trek to Winchester, I looked up the typewriter event that Caitlin mentioned.  It turns out that what she was referencing was a one-time event that has already happened.  So my hopes of click-clacking it up on the downtown walking mall, showing my son the joy of this percussively creative experience, will not yet come to sunlit fruition. 

But I did follow up my research with more research.  And things have started happening.  I'm now a newly welcomed member of Antique Typewriter Collectors, a 9K strong Facebook group.  One perk of this group is that after browsing its posts for just a bit, I learned that today is National Typewriter Day.  TODAY.  What are the odds?  

I also have a beautiful robin egg blue Italian vintage typewriter in an eBay cart.  Celebrate a minor holiday and what not.

To review, you should consider either: 

- Marco Polo-ing your friends.  Like me.  (Let me know if you join!)

- Typing.  Possibly on a typewriter.

My son has a book that we used to read ad-nauseum called Peanut Butter's Tasty Opposites.  To read it aloud you end up saying two things that are opposite, then casually asking, "opposites?" then answering, "yes!".  That is, until the page with peanut butter and jelly, but I won't give anything away.  

I think I just wrote the sequel.  

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I took the test again.  85 WPM and 99% accuracy!  #boom