I spend a lot of time hovering over a keyboard. It’s how I choose to make my living … typing. Yeah, moving my fingers in a specific order learned years ago as a senior in high school. I hated that class.

My parents made me take it. Me, a graduating senior, being forced to take a class. “I can choose my own classes.”

“Nope, you will take typing,” they said with a strong emphasis on “will” and a note of serious finality. There was no room for arguing with serious finality. I did anyway.

“It’s my last semester of my high school life, I want to have fun!”

“You will have time for plenty of fun, but you are going to take typing. It is a skill that will serve you well.”

Oh well, I still had baseball, cars, and girls. I could stomach one final torture of a class.

The typing teacher was brand new. This was her first semester and she thought teaching beginning typing was beneath her, and I thought taking it was beneath me. She didn’t want to be there and neither did I. You would think we had something in common, but we didn’t. We clashed the moment we laid eyes on each other.

I was the arrogant senior in a freshman or sophomore-level class, and she was the arrogant new teacher who was going to use this class to step up to something better. I won’t say we hated each other, but the mutual dislike was palpable. I would walk into the room and she would be laughing and joking with other students. Our eyes would meet, the barometric pressure would drop, clouds would form and there was thunder and lightning.

I thought I would loaf thorough typing with a “C,” maybe a “B,” and be done with high school. But the Wicked Witch of Texas Wesleyan (that’s where she had recently graduated from) had other ideas.

Two weeks into the course I couldn’t (and didn’t care) to type, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” She came to me and said with a leer, “I checked your records, if I fail you in this class, you won’t graduate, and I want to fail you. I don’t like you.”

None of this was news to me. I wasn’t a good student, but I wanted to graduate. Most teachers wanted me gone, so they would pass me to get rid of me, but not Madame Crusader, the Guardian of the Royals, the brand of mechanical typewriter we used. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut when beaten. I smiled and went to my Royal. “The quick brown fox …”

I passed – and with an “A.” It chapped the Wicked Witch something fierce, but nobody could beat me for speed or accuracy by the end of the semester. I was hot; 60-words-per-minute hot, without mistakes. I did it all for spite, but as predicted, the skill has served me well.

In college, I made a fortune typing other kid’s papers for a dollar per page; my first paid writing job. In the Marine Corps, it was a blessing and a curse. Typing got me a courier job, which was a blast, but put me in the heat of things too many times.

Today, nearly 50 years later, I almost enjoy typing. The only thing that keeps me from complete happiness is the memory of the Wicked Witch that comes uninvited when I touch a keyboard. I wonder what became of her. She did wear red shoes don’t you know?

David Wilson Atwood is a local freelance writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be emailed at david@starchasers.us.