I love typewriters. My mother had one that she bought while she was in college. I found it in a closet when I was little and she let me play with it. It was a sexy, teal green Smith Corona number, complete with a tan leatherette carrying case. Tres moderne, for its time. It weighed about 10 pounds. I loved feel of the keys and the satisfying clackity-clack as the arms smacked the ribbon to stamp out letters. I even loved the smell of the ink-drenched ribbon. 
As a tiny girl, I mimicked what I saw my mother do when she typed out articles for the local newspaper. I climbed up in her chair and whacked random keys to fill up blank pages with combinations of letters that looked like words. When I learned to read, I graduated to the 2-3 finger hunt-and-peck method to write 1-3 page stories where ghosts haunted castles but nothing much happened. In junior high, I took a typing class and learned to unleash 100+ words a minute. My stories got a little livelier and a little longer. Computers came along and I never looked back. Over the years my keyboards have gotten smaller and sleeker while my stories got longer and “bigger” (thrillers = big stakes). But I still have a place in my heart for typewriters. On my desk is a 3-dimensional perpetual calendar. It’s a doghouse with Snoopy on top, hunched over a black typewriter. Friends give me postcards with noir-ish black & white photos of typewriters. And today, someone I hadn’t seen since early December gave me a little something he found during his holiday travels. He handed me a gift-wrapped bookmark that’s a cutout of a vintage typewriter, pictured here. I love it! How about you, have you ever used a typewriter?
