My Kingdom for a Typewriter

I cannot seem to stay on task.  I get ready, get set, and go…tapping out my story on my red laptop (red is my favorite color – especially since I’m a Buckeye fan).  But then I pause while I think…and scrooooll back a page or two and see a misplaced comma or three uses of the word “walk” in the same paragraph…and now I’m rewriting something I should ignore…at least for the time being.

A typewriter would stop this bad writing habit.  I’m certain of this.  I would be barred from instantaneous copy, cut and paste.  I would largely have to ignore my mistakes until it was time for a rewrite.  I would have to STAY ON TASK.  Too bad typewriters are few and far between with the ribbons even farther.  I probably could still find one on e-bay… 

When I was in high school (“back in my day”) we were all required to take typing.  Those who improved beyond 60 wpm on the old ka-chunk, ka-chunk black manual typewriters were promoted to one of the zippy slick electric models in the front of the room.  In my Navy days, we used typewriters for everything and woe was anyone who made a typo because the entire form or document had to be rewritten from the start.  Funny too, when I lived in Japan (arguably the computer capital of the world), at the dawn of this millennium they still used typewriters in every government facility I visited.

Alas, I am cursed with this modern “convenience” of the electronic age where spelling mistakes are detected in a moment’s notice and a pop-up thesaurus is only a click away.  Bah…maybe I’ll keep my lovely laptop and instead look online for some sticktoitiveness.