Edith wrote this story in the mid-1990’s.
I went to K-Mart with two items on my list, laundry soap and typing paper. I was in the office supply aisle, searching for typing paper. I came across some paper clips. Yes, I needed those, too. But I couldn’t find the typing paper. Crayons, school tablets, and file folders abound, but still no typing paper! Then I found the “other” office supplies. Two aisles over, IBM computer paper, IBM paper shredders, photo paper. No typing paper there either. I was, in fact, hoping to find erasable typing paper. A clerk wearing the red vest with the Kmart logo gave me a blank stare when I asked where it would be. She proceeded to look where I had been already. After pointless searching, she said she would call the manager. The closest she came to typing paper was a pack of 1000 sheets of multiple use paper, “A good bargain for $4.97,” she said. I agreed but didn’t want that much. “Have you tried Knobles Office Supplies downtown?” No, I had not, nor did I want to, for they are expensive. You see, I live in a small Wyoming town in the summer and, other than Kmart, the nearest stores with normal prices are 85 miles away. I asked her if no one used typewriters anymore. Another blank stare. I decided it was my white hair. I thanked her and took my other goods to the cash register.
I passed Knobles on my way home and stopped in. Guess what? Knobles didn’t have any typewriter paper either. I thought I would be blessed to have the extra typewriter ribbon bought in Austin last winter. I am talking about an IBM electric typewriter ribbon which I searched even more to find. I remember that I thought I was pretty smart to own an IBM Selectric until then.
Annoyance still simmering inside of me, I started to think of the other things that have surreptitiously slipped up on me as I approached so called old age. Yes, I am old enough to remember taking typing lessons to music in ninth grade, and I remember when I reached thirty-five words a minute. My older brother won a medal in the Interscholastic League for typing 95 words a minute, a record he held for fifty years. He attributed it to piano lessons. He was a talented pupil; in fact he came back from WWII and played The Hungarian Rhapsody by heart soon after when he saw our old piano we had all learned on.
In high school I used to borrow my father’s old (then fairly new) clunky Royal. Later, I took a prized graduation present with me to college, a portable Underwood. Boy, was that a great typewriter! I used it for years, until it finally gave out. And speaking of ribbons, those cloth ribbons lasted almost forever, at least until the print was too faint to read.
Even three of my children took the same old typewriter to college. Somehow, we kept it going, one by one until the third child, my English major son, called one day, “Mom, Betsy died.”
“Betsy?”
“You know that old typewriter. I’m stuck, so I have to have a Word Processor.”
“Word processor? Why would you need a word processor?”
He sighed that familiar sigh of a still teenage son approaching manhood, career, and graduate school. Mothers back then had a hard time understanding all this. If it was good enough for me, why not get a new typewriter. That didn’t go over at all. He won hands down and bought a Word Processor. He continued with that until in the midst of the end of graduate school writing his master’s thesis. The phone rang. “Mom, it blew up!”
“What blue up?”
“The Word Processor.”
“How could that happen? We bought it at Sears, and it was guaranteed?”
Not for this long. Look, I’ve got to finish this work.”
“Can’t you pay somebody to type it for you?” I said, seeing more dollars down the drain.
Well, we got the computer and his MA in English. Guess what? It wasn’t long before it was out of date. Fast, just in time for him to need a new computer, absolutely necessary! “Too slow,” he said. He had to be able to use one compatible with his department’s computer. I might as well have been talking to a nuclear scientist to understand whatever he was getting at. He did graduate with honors but searched a year for a job. “Whew,” I said to myself. “A long road to hoe,” as we said back in my young life.
The phone rang. He’d been at his new job two months. “Mom, guess what? I just bought a new computer.”
“Again?”
“You’d never believe what it does! It’s the new Macintosh which is faster than the old. You just can’t believe what it can do. If I had the money, I would invest in some stock. This is going to change the world of computers.”
“Why did you need that so soon?”
“I’ve got to write, Mom. Publish! You know I can’t make enough money to support a wife and two children on my salary. High school teachers make more than I do as an assistant professor at this college!”
Flashes of his high school friends now in law, engineering and medicine in my brain. He was the one who said of English, “If you want to make a career of teaching, English at the college level, you should do that! You must like your profession. Can you imagine how unhappy you’d be if you chose the wrong career? He was the one who said, “You have to love your work. Money isn’t the most important thing in life.”
“But I thought you liked it there.”
“I do, but I can’t afford to stay here much longer at this salary. Lisa doesn’t want to work until Laura and Juliette are in school.” (Both majored in English Literature). “Mom, you ought to see what this can do.”
A long diatribe of the ongoing mysteries of the computer, garbled (to me) information. Long ago I was convinced I’d never catch up with the world, though I try. I can’t conceive what mysteries are still in the computer.
My husband decided indeed, we needed one to catch up on things. And now he too plays with it for hours, as I know my son does. Certainly, he couldn’t be doing all that we said was important, but he is getting “smarter and smarter” and spending hours enjoying all that information he is gathering. He and my husband talk about it on email. I hate email, though it’s the only way my children correspond. Have you tried to read emails with bifocals? A problem of neck aches. I spend .33 cents to mail them letters. I can email, but don’t like it, except for urgent messages. A “Happy Birthday” email is about as cold as one can get. Yes, I tried the cards, too. Yuk! Give me Hallmark, please.
How’s his writing coming along. “Published yet?”
“Well, no but it’s hard with two babies. Laura stands at my door calling, “Daddy! Daddy!” Hey, Mom, do you know I’m teaching her the computer already? Yeah, I know she’s only two, but we have so much fun…..”
Do you know what? I remember telling my children in the 1970’s, once long ago in the dark ages, “You really should acquaint yourself with computers. Just take an elective and learn the basics. You might need it someday.”
“Ha! A computer in drama and speech,” responded my middle daughter. She did learn but not in college. She used it daily in her television job. My oldest daughter majored in Spanish and French. “I’m going to teach, of course, I don’t need to learn about computers.” She did though, for grades and papers. She is still learning, and her children are helping her. The third (the baby) did take computer classes. She’s a teacher and is teaching her youngsters ages five and seven who already know more than I do.