Old School.....

I am going to steal some lines from  STAR WARS to start this post.....

Long, long ago

In a Galaxy

Far, far away ..

Before the age of 

computers, laptops

androids and apples devices

(please pretend this is receding into the page- to get the full effect)

( oh - and sing da da tah da da da)

We

had ....

TYPEWRITERS

I remember spending time with my mother in her office at her work, I played under her desk and she would be typing. Even now I remember marveling at how fast she could type. The  furious clackity clack of those keys was like a speeding train. The rhythm of it sometimes lulled me to sleep and when I was big enough she would let me have a ' go'  on her new electric Olivette typewriter. When I hit High school typing was one of the subject girls had to take. I hated typing as the teachers placed a small tablecloth thingy over your hands and you had to learn to 'touch' type, that is typing without looking at your hands, while reading.  It was a disaster for me.... I was certainly not my mother and gave typing up as a bad job as soon as I could.

As life would have it, one of my first jobs entailed typing, I told the interviewer  that I could type 60 words a minute - so that I could get the job.  I rushed home to  mom, who TRIED to help me learn to type.. again.... A hopeless task! Somehow I managed to whack out a few letters with the help of Tippex(a corrective fluid) and when all else failed I took work  home to mom......(Thank you Mommy!) 

Where is this all going... Well a few weeks ago, I came across an antiques shop in Midlands called Treasures and Trash. I walked into one of the rooms and stepped back in time... The room was filled with typewriters. Beautiful pale green, blue and really old black machines. Some in pristine condition and some really old ones. I gingerly placed my finger on the keys of one, and the rhythm of A S D  F H J K L came back immediately, so many memories came flooding back to  me -  the smell my mothers cigarettes in her office as she bashed away at the keys, the sound of girls laughing and chattering in our class room, typing out recipes for my first cook book and my tiny office in the back of a furniture store.......

As you can well imagine I bought one immediately. A green one like the one from my memories.... like my mom's one!

I put in on display in out kitchen  area, After a few days Little Madame  asked what it was. Remember she was born a few years ago,  into a world of technology  that boogles us 'old' folks minds. We got some paper out, I showed her how to roll it in, and then showed her how if you whacked(I had forgotten how hard you had to push the manual keys down) an A - it would magically appear on the paper in front of you.......Squeals of delight ensued! She was having such fun. She said it was a lot more fun than the ipad and spent the entire afternoon bashing out stories!

It's funny to me how life is somehow a circle, as I sat next to my baby I could not help remembering sitting next to my mother at our dining room table 40ish years back, squealing and laughing in delight as words magically appeared on a piece of paper. I feel some how that our minds are filing cabinets, all the memories go in to a file.  At the right time, something will trigger them, the drawer will slide open and they all rush back out at you, making you smile.

Memories are happy things, that you smile at, memories can be triggered by so many things, smells, places, food and in this case a simple old school typewriter. I loved remembering my 'mom' and our typing days, however in years to come I will have one more memory to add to this simple machine. A hot autumn afternoon, laughing as my Little Madame typed 'I love you mommy! ' ....xxx