Today's thoughts are brought to you by the font Courier, because it looks like a 1970's typewriter.
I do love typewriters... I really do! I especially love receiving mail typed on a lovely typewriter. I love how the typos make it look like someone really typed it... not just a machine auto-correcting your spelling as you go. I love how once you think something and type those keys it is on the page for all to see. You can't edit once you have written - you can only go back and xxxxxx over the words you do not want, leaving obvious scars on your work.
Somehow when I type on a typewriter a different part of my brain kicks into gear. Suddenly words start forming on the page directly from my heart, with nothing but my fingers and the clacking keys on the paper as a mediator between my thoughts and the letter I am crafting. I love typewriters. So does my two year old (who will soon be three!) This summer he asked if he could please write a letter, probably to Papa Hat or Granny-in-Agassiz, though I don't recall now who it was for. I said he could but only if he was VERY careful, which he usually was. This time he wasn't though... what posessed him I will never know but he carefully ripped out every last inch of my black and red ribbon and in the process the good old typewriter got out of alignment. I was shocked and sad and didn't know what to do! So I looked online (ironically) to find a typewriter repairman.
Thanks to my sons experimenting with ink and ribbon I was privileged to meet Mr. Polson and hear the history of my thrift-store-find typewriter. I will save the story for another blog post because I am so tired. If this was writen on a typewriter you would start to notice more and more mistakes as I became more and more sleepy... I will leave you with the quote from a little boy I met at the Regional Assembly of Text one day while making buttons. I thought it was so ironic that this little boy who has only ever known computers was amazed at the speed of this new technology, the typewriter.
Somehow when I type on a typewriter a different part of my brain kicks into gear. Suddenly words start forming on the page directly from my heart, with nothing but my fingers and the clacking keys on the paper as a mediator between my thoughts and the letter I am crafting. I love typewriters. So does my two year old (who will soon be three!) This summer he asked if he could please write a letter, probably to Papa Hat or Granny-in-Agassiz, though I don't recall now who it was for. I said he could but only if he was VERY careful, which he usually was. This time he wasn't though... what posessed him I will never know but he carefully ripped out every last inch of my black and red ribbon and in the process the good old typewriter got out of alignment. I was shocked and sad and didn't know what to do! So I looked online (ironically) to find a typewriter repairman.
Thanks to my sons experimenting with ink and ribbon I was privileged to meet Mr. Polson and hear the history of my thrift-store-find typewriter. I will save the story for another blog post because I am so tired. If this was writen on a typewriter you would start to notice more and more mistakes as I became more and more sleepy... I will leave you with the quote from a little boy I met at the Regional Assembly of Text one day while making buttons. I thought it was so ironic that this little boy who has only ever known computers was amazed at the speed of this new technology, the typewriter.
"Mom LOOK! This is so cool! I am typing the letters here on the keyboard, and the letters are going STRAIGHT onto the page!!! You don't even need a printer! It's INSTANT!"
