Qwerty and the Home Row

Poof! A chalk eraser ricocheted off the top of my head. Chalk dust settled in a cloud around my desk.

“I told you, Mitchell!  I told the class that if I caught anyone looking at their keyboard, I would wing an eraser at them. There you were staring at your fingers.”

The rest of the class, afraid to look up from the test cards in front of them, nevertheless, giggled. It was after all, a timed typing test so every word counted.

Snorting the dust from my nostrils, it made sense to me now why I had seen other male students through the years walking the halls of the high school, looking like their hair had grayed prematurely.

I was sitting in Mr. Walton’s typing class. His first name was Malcom but, around the high school he was known as “Mal.”

Typing was considered an elective. A non-required class used as filler to reach your mandatory number of graduating credits. My best friend, Chuck, and I were taking it because the only thing left in that time slot was Home Economics and I already knew how to iron a shirt.

Typing was also an important class to take if you were planning on preparing papers for a college education or wanted to work in the secretarial field.

It was so different back then that it is now. I asked a few high school kids from my church if typing is offered in school these days. Apparently, the kids are expected to learn how to use a computer keyboard on their own. With spell check and other AI features including speech to type, why should they learn how to correctly place their fingers on a keyboard. They don’t even use typing paper anymore. All assignments are electronically sent to the teacher’s inbox.

That’s not the way things worked back in 1972. In Mal Walton’s class, if you wanted an “A” grade, you had to earn it. He was a good teacher, and he took his class seriously.

“Truants!” he yelled while staring out the classroom window. Across the street from the high school was a burger joint which was off limits to students during school hours. He was watching three known students from the school enter the burgeria. Watching students break the rules caused Mal to seethe inside.

“If I ever see any of you from this class enter that establishment during school hours, I’m dropping your weekly grade. I kid you not!”

“Now, I expect that by the end of this class you will be able to type 45 words per minute by copying off a test sheet. You should know your keyboard so well that if I blindfolded you, you could type from dictation.

I turned to Chuck. “Is it too late to sign up for home economics?”

Mr. Walton had two girls who he used as teacher’s aids. Another name for them would be henchmen. They corrected all the papers and were very handy with their red pens. They were, however, useful in helping us get oriented to the fundamentals of typing.

“The typewriters that sit in front of you are Royal Classics. These are the upper standard for typewriters in schools across the nation. You will protect my typewriters with your life. If I must make a choice between my typewriter and your life, make no mistake about what it will be.”

“Ironing could be fun,” I whispered to Chuck.

The first week’s instruction included: how to load a sheet of paper straight, onto the platen roller without creasing a wrinkle on the page. We learned how to use the paper release lever to quickly pull wrinkled paper out of the typewriter to start over again.

We learned to never, ever, hit the ribbon with the type bars if there was no paper on the platen.

We learned what the word Qwerty meant.

“It is not the number after Qwenty-nine,” Mal shouted with the seriousness of a drill sergeant.

“Now we will learn to find the starting position for your fingers. You will always start in this position! This is called the Home Row. You may write on your fingernails with felt pen if it helps.”

“Left Hand. Pinky finger on the “A”. Ring finger on the “S”. Middle on the “D”, and Index on the “F”.”

“Right hand. Index finger on the “J”. Middle finger on the “K”. Ring finger on the “L” and Pinky on the semi-colon. You will be extremely discouraged when you look at the page you are typing on if you don’t start from this position.”

“Now curl your fingers so your fingertips are lined up and sit up with your back straight. Posture is perfection!”

With paper in place, we began finger coordination.

“I do not approve of profanity in my classroom. If you feel the need to swear, you will use the word, “Frank.” If your name happens to be Frank, I apologize.”

We learned many things from this exercise. For Instance, if two keys are pushed at the same time, the type bars will jam together, and you must manually release them.

“Frankity, frankin, frank!”

“When you have typed all the way across the page, your carriage will be all the way to the left and you will hear a bell. With your left hand, reach up and push the carriage all the way to the right with the return lever. This will also rotate the platen so you can type on the next line underneath.”

Then we were given an exercise card from the henchmen and were told to type exactly what we saw on the card.

Two things I learned: 1) pinky fingers are basically lazy and weren’t designed to push weighted keys down. 2) I pitied anyone in the room named Frank.

Beyond day one, we began finding letters and numbers from other rows and how to hit them from off the Home Row. If our hands were puppets, our fingers would look like they were doing a line dance. It shocked me as to how easy it was to tie fingers into a knot.

Eventually, after a few weeks, my ability to type improved to the point where I was almost getting thirty words per minute. A “B” grade. Each time we were finished with a speed drill, the wheezing henchmen with their giggly little laughs would move throughout the room, picking up the freshly typed 8.5 × 11 pages. You could see the red ink pens, plus backups, bulging from their shirt pockets. Once they had all the sheets back at their desks, they would pour over them like hyenas finishing off a carcass, their red pens flashing in the air. It was not uncommon for me to receive my paper back with multiple misspelled words circled and 30 out of 45 written at the top.

Then one day, I had an excused absence to walk from the school to my optometrist’s office to get fitted for contacts. On the way back to the school after the appointment, I came off a side street and ended up at the parking lot of the burger joint. Having a craving for a Coke, I entered the building at the same moment Mal Walton was watching from his classroom window.

“Truant!” he snarled as he stared through the blinds. “Is that Mitchell?” One of the helpful henchmen came over to confirm.

As I entered Mr. Walton’s class the next day, he called me to the front of the room.

“Take a seat here at the desk of shame, Mr. Mitchell.”

I sat down behind a Royal Classic.

“Place a sheet of paper in the carriage please.”

I rolled a sheet onto the platen and straightened it.

“You were observed by me going into that burger joint across the street during school hours. A violation of the school rules. Your grade this week will be determined by your typing speed and accuracy.”

The henchmen circled the table and growled, saliva dripped from the lips of their gaping mouths.

Before I could use my excused absence defense, he continued, “You will type from my dictation . . . with a bag over your head.”

“What the Frank?”

Sitting at the typewriter with a black satin bag over my head seemed to delight the rest of the class.

“Position your fingers on the Home Keys.”

Think, Mitchell.

I let my fingers touch the keys, finding the four rows. Oh yah, I know where I am now. Across the room I heard Chuck fake cough twice. On a third cough he muffled the words, “wrong row,” although I mistook it for his impersonation of Scooby-Doo.

Mr. Walton said, “Begin typing.”

“I, Marty Mitchell, was caught entering the burgeria across the street from the high school during school hours which was in direct violation of school policy. My grade this week is dependent upon my familiarity with a typewriter keyboard and my ability to spell 45 words per minute.”

You know, when I really needed it, I was able to dig down deep and mentally picture the keyboard and the keys in my head. I was watching the keyboard in my mind’s eye and firing off the words as fast as he spoke them, and he wasn’t able to wing a chalk eraser off the top of my head. It was amazing to be able to type with such speed without the smell of chalk dust in my nostrils. With the bag still over my head, I reached forward and pulled the typed page from the platen. Holding it in the air, it was quickly snatched by the henchmen.

“Read it and weep, Mr. Walton.”

And that’s how I got a “D” for that week. For you see, it makes no difference how well you spell or how many words per minute you can hammer out if you don’t first start with your fingers on the Home Row.

Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes