Toss the Typewriter’s Origin Story

As we approach the tenth anniversary of my first Toss the Typewriter post it is time to brush off the dust bunnies, toss out unused words, and redecorate my website. Like many others in this near-post-Covid-19 world, I have found simpler is easier and less is a multitude. That new-found wisdom has now been applied to my website. Fewer pages, straight-forward identity, and I have said good-bye to my tag line, “Appreciate the Past; Live the Present; Anticipate the future.” Although there is wisdom in those words, they no longer are my mantra.

But what about my website’s title, Toss the Typewriter? It must go, I decided. And so, I cut the words. I added them back. I hovered over them, ready to cut again. Then, I sat back and turned the words this way and that. Considered their meaning to me, and realized, I could not let them go. But I needed to reposition them. Those words are no longer the title of my website, but they have found a lovely home as the title of my blog.

I welcome you now, to my blog, Toss the Typewriter. Here, I hope you’ll find stories that resonate with your own experiences.

But what, you ask, do the words Toss the Typewriter mean to me? They are violent, destructive words, in a time where hope, trust, and rebuilding relationships are needed. And I have friends who love their typewriters. They click and punch away at metal keys and release a multitude of stories that go on to be published. How could I be so disrespectful to a machine that holds the assist record for so many writers: Hemmingway, Agatha Cristy, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, and Maya Angelou’s poem, And Still I Rise? Have I not outgrown this hot-headed image?

Actually, it is out of respect that I chose to keep the title. I have brushed off and edited the blog’s origin story so you will know the many reasons my blog retains the name Toss the Typewriter.

1) I am an informational technologist. I am fascinated by the ability of a computer to turn thought into action. Computers led me to places that an ordinary typewriter could not envision. When I saw that power, I packed my typewriter into its hard plastic shell and closeted it. I typed “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” into the one-line word-processor and never looked back.

2) I love writing. But there are days-upon-weeks when I stare at that QWERTY keyboard and wish the words would flow. During those everlasting months, tossing the typewriter sounds like an inspired choice. I have a love-hate relationship with that daily alphabet soup.

3) When I was in college several centuries ago, I actually had a typewriter. It was pretty awesome: electric with a ribbon that I could manually rewind when it ran out. It had a back-space key that erased what I had just typed, and red and black ink on its ribbon. Back then I could touch-type a five-page paper in an hour, so I started a business typing up my friend’s papers. A five-pager brought in a six-pack of Molson Golden delivered to my room. Entrepreneurship at its beery best (sorry about that). Then computers came along, followed by PCs, and I was out of business. That was probably a good thing, or I might still be typing other people’s words for a six-pack.

4) Imagine this: You are in your high school typing class. It is 8:45 AM and the steam pipes are just heating up. Your fingers are frozen from forgotten gloves. Stiff black keys wait for your first punch, ready to resist. There’s no correction tape. It is you, the typewriter, and the words hanging to your left, which you must type without error in one minute. Need I say more?

5) Keep imagining now. Picture that same morning, and you are on the third floor. The windows are open and the skies are blue with clouds that could lull you to sleep. You carry your behemoth Remington to the window and let it fly. Ah, the beauty of this machine tumbling end-to-end. Metal hits concrete shattering the typewriter into hundreds of pieces. You skip down the stairs to admire the chaos, and that is when you see it. There, embedded in the sidewalk, the perfect sentence written out by typewriter keys. It becomes the first sentence of your best-selling novel. I would never do this; but I can dream.

6) These days, instead of trying to toss a 20 pound, expensive piece of equipment, we can toss a one-pound, $12 keyboard. We’ve come so far. But where’s the satisfaction?

7) “Don’t let then know you can type,” recommended the 1977 version of Games Mother Never Taught You: Corporate Gamesmanship for Women, by Betty Lehan Harragan (page 318). The typewriter was a pariah to be hidden away because of its “association with secretarial duties.” I followed a lot of advice found in this book, but luckily I missed this recommendation. With a Bachelors in Recreation Management, I typed my way from promotion to promotion, until I infiltrated the world of computer programming. While I credited the QWERTY keyboard for introducing me to my career, I was happy to exchange the clunky typewriter for my first equally-ungainly Apple computer.

8) The final reason for naming my blog Toss the Typewriter is nrvsidr pg yjsy smmpuomh fsu ejrm upit gomhrtd str ,ods;ohmrf smf upit ejp;r ,smidvto[y ;ppld ;olr yjod/

Translation: The final reason for naming my blog Toss the Typewriter is because of that annoying day when your fingers are misaligned and your whole manuscript looks like this.