Rain, Like a Typewriter

Rain tap, tap, taps
on our tin box roof,
like a typewriter

rhythmically transcribing
today’s lesson

“Erect postures,
elbows at ninety degrees,
fingers poised, ready,
and go…fff…ggg…”

the old machines
weighing heavily on my soul
disrupting my sense of self –
aspirations more esteemed
than stenographer, or secretary –
mother’s answer to securing a suitable man

“Target 125 words/minute,
accuracy counts”
keys tangle
stick
ribbon collapsing
whiteout highlighting
my fallibility
I seethe

rail against learning
a skill redundant for a scholar –
math and psychiatry in sight –

Tap, tap, tap
the rain pummels now
thunderous applause
as two crows cackle
hysterical mockery
such shortsightedness

as if teenage minds
can conceive of the future
as if I might have foreseen
the emergence of computers
machinery insinuating
itself into the crux
of human existence

Had to lie, in the end
post-secondary life
demanding accurate skills –
faked it till I made it.

(Inspiration by:
Weekend Writing Prompt #59: typewriter (149 words)
Daily Addiction:  accurate
Ragtag Community’s daily prompt:  target.)

Published by

VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

19 thoughts on “Rain, Like a Typewriter”

  1. Never thought of typewriter on hearing the sound of rain but now I will 🙂 . Went for a few classes but did not get past ‘ asdf; lkj ‘ . This poem brought back the memories😀

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    1. I think all of us of a certain age have memories. It happened to be raining when I wrote the poem, and it just seemed to add to add the tone. Thanks again.

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  2. Fun poem! Brings back memories. My mother, in her teens, did “exhibition” typing at the Iowa State Fair (the late 1930s, I suppose) with a typing speed of +125 wpm. She went on to get a business degree before WWII, when she enlisted in the Navy. Anyway, she believed that typing was an essential survival skill, and so we, all of us kids, learned to type on her Underwood typewriter. The fingers became an extension of the mind. Like playing piano. Lovely memories from my childhood.

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  4. I remember typewriters. I loved the sound they made, the keys hitting the paper. I used a lot of whiteout for my errors, lol. Laptops, though, are easier on your wrist and it’s much easier to make corrections.

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  7. There were hardly ever any boys in typing class, actually, I can’t even remember one. The assumption that women needed the skill to survive. We could only be the business man’s helper, until we married, and then continued to be seen as helpmate, lacking our own identity. Makes me think of my Grade 12 math teacher who passed me, I had 48, with the assumption I wouldn’t need math.

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  8. I love the combination of the rain with the sound of the typewriter. There must have been something in the air yesterday! I was telling my daughter about my “C” in typing class (before the days of whiteout), caused mostly by poor rhythm that tangled the keys. It isn’t easy to describe a typewriter to someone who has never seen one!

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    1. I did not do well in typing class either, and apparently, those tangled keys still haunt. You are right, it was corrective tape – I had forgotten that part.

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