Word Processing

image borrowed from bing

Word Processing

The last time somebody said,”I can write so much better

on a word processor,” I replied,”They used to say the

same thing about drugs.”--Roy Blount, Jr.

Hemingway always wrote everything in longhand,

as did I, & still do, because

there is something essential for me

in seeing those words for the first time

in my unique & personal scrawl.

I’ve always been a Bic-boy, writing in pen,

though these days it tends to be with

a 1mm black-lined rolling writer ballpoint,

having given up writing in pencil in Junior High,

even though several creative writing teachers

insisted on it half a decade ago--

when typewriters were still a staple tool;

the second great joy for me while writing

was to watch my words appearing so neatly

typed on a blank page. 

For years I used an avocado green 

Underwood portable typewriter, and

you had to pound those keys soundly

to get dark even results--which I regretted

when I graduated to an electric typewriter,

& after suffering with overtyping repeated

letters, one learned a softer touch.

My typing skills slowly improved as most

of my vocational career played out in offices,

at a steel desk, with a typewriter being

the primary note & communication device.

I remember the excitement I felt,

the naked joy, when I was finally issued

an IBM Selectric typewriter, complete

with an auto-correction function--

and then the actual anger I experienced

when the VA reclaimed all those beautiful

machines, & replaced them with the

early models of Apple computers.

Very few of us even had a clue about

operating computers, so we were forced

to endure several 8 hour training sessions

that covered “everything we needed to know”

about our new systems--but most of us

could not stay focused, could not process

more than 2 hours before we interfaced

with dreaded sensory overload, and immediately

after each official government class

we would have to resort to begging

the few computer geeks among us

to perform impromptu in services 

with the rest of us;

then after what seemed ages, an eternity

of frustration & ignorance, we began

to possess marginal skills, & much like

trained chimpanzees, we could perform

certain functions by rote.

Add to this the active conflict 

of owning an Mac computer at home

because our children had learned their

skills on the free Macs given to their schools,

and by then working on PC’s at the office,

it was like shifting between left-hand

& right-hand drive twice daily, plaguing

us with active cognitive dissonance. 

It has been our children who have taught

us the skills to barely comprehend

the latest technology, & we have had to

accept our subservient role graciously.

So the bottom line becomes

it is sort of enlightening to realize

that older folks can continue to learn

new skills, and can peripherally participate

in the saccadic swirl, the overwhelming

constant introduction of new communication

devices, & even though we probably will not

camp out over night in a line to get one of them,

& we may never come up to par, we will putter

away at our own pace, expanding our sphere

of fellowship to every corner of the planet,

even though it is evident that we will only

utilize our own computers at the same

rate as we have habitually used our own 

brain--at less than 5% of its capacity. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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