Caps, or Capes


 

I have a headache. And a secret.

My sibling-family gets migraines. All seven of us. Well. I have one brother who says he doesn’t. But truthfully, I just think he is holding out on the whole story. I don’t think he wants to succumb to the Kronenberger Curse.

Anyway, I have one now. It has always been difficult for me to write, or to try to be creative, when I have a migraine. I liken it to a jackhammer on one side of my brain. It makes the rest of “thinking” a little impossible.

Just now, I have tried to write three different pieces. The first was about Witch Hunts, and Manafort’s recent Guilty Plea. If Mueller is hunting Witches, he needs to take lessons. He keeps bringing in criminals instead.

The second writing attempt was about NRA TV host Dana Loesch, using her talk show, to depict Thomas the Train and Friends in Ku Klux Klan Hoods, on burning tracks. Okay, then Dana. Diversity 101 Classes start Monday.

The third story was about my brother Ed, and my friend Janet, both calling me on the very same night. I also had two Robo-Callers, and three Potential Spammers. Talking to Ed and Janet was much more fun than learning I am eligible for some big-damn-deal, somewhere, at a low-interest rate.

As I do all of this, I noticed that I still am able to type really fast. Despite my headache. Speedy Gonzalez Fast. Yes, when I write, I can move along the keyboard almost as fast as my thoughts go. That QWERTY keyboard. But you take that QWERTY away, and I am in the Land of the Lost.

The QWERTY layout was devised a long time ago, but a guy named Christopher Latham Sholes. He was a newspaper editor and printer who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He created the design, because the “old” layout for keyboards made the things susceptible to “jamming” and it held up production of the news.

So, in October 1867, Sholes filed a patent application for his early writing machine. Which, by the way, he developed with the assistance of his friends Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé.

Whenever I am faced with an alternate keyboard, like on a “Log In” screen, where Netflix, or Amazon is asking for your password, I jerk around like I’ve never seen the Latin alphabet before. And by god, it has been around since the 7th Century BC.

At any rate, I am glad the keys are where they are now.
Typing is one of my few rare talents. Unless of course, you misplace your hands by one key, and then all hell breaks ;pose/. O , kema ot/.yjer os mp Rui,ety pr redsafds tp pt ewpods paxcxe/

You know.

I can’t remember my high school typing teacher’s name. But she always used to poke my back, and tell me I was hunting and pecking. With her horn-rimmed glasses and her coal-black-beehive hair.

She said I should be so good at typing, that I could do it on two typewriters at the same time. I told her, “No way in heck. That would be ‘stereo-typing’.”

Then I told her that the only way I would ever “stereo-type” was if I listened to music while I hunted and pecked.

I had to go sit in the hall that day. Had to sort out my Ps and Qs. It was not a Red-Letter Day. I crossed when I should have dotted.

I am pretty sure that’s the day when I vowed to become SuperTyper, despite any physical odds, like migraines.
And. Now you know my secret identity.

No capes.

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“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

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“I believe in the magic and authority of words.”
― René Char

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“Some people have a way with words, and other people…oh, uh, not have way.”
― Steve Martin

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