Old Things

I was thinking back to my days as a kid in grammar school. Remembering not so fondly the typewriter. And I'm not talking about one of those high-powered electric fangled correcting IBM Selectric typewriters. I'm talking back to the 1970s and manual typewriters. I remember typing reports and taking the entire evening to type one page. I went to Catholic school -- not only were we not allowed to have any typographical errors or misspellings, we were also not allowed to have observable corrections on the page. No eraser marks, no white-out, and absolutely no -- Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ-forbid -- scratch-outs or line-outs. Gasp! I remember spending an hour typing a page only to make a typo on the last line. You know what the nuns expected. Take out that sheet with the memorable screeching-whirring sound, crumple it up, and start that page over again. I remember being on the verge of tears through all of primetime, missing Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Dallas, Falcon Crest, all so that Sister Francis Raymond wouldn't have to be mortified and defiled by having to view a pencil eraser stain on the last line of my essay on Thomas Jefferson. Funny though, I have to say, throughout the entire 1970s, I never once lost a phone call in mid-conversation nor had my telephone run out of juice. And... I could recite all of my friends' phone numbers by heart.