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Sunday, September 19, 2010

How I Passed High School Typing

As I sit here and type I am reminded that I only passed high school typing by jumping in the lake.

I lived in a small town, population 1400 at its largest. We had the largest graduating class in the history of the school. We graduated 66 students and my class rank was 33rd.  I was not a prize student. Our class sponsors decided that they would sponsor an activity for the class so the men sponsors organized an over night camping trip to a large lake about 30 miles from our school for all the male students.

I was just barely making a grade of low C in typing class and my typing teacher was one of the class sponsors. I guess my big fingers had trouble with those small keys, or like today when my brain works faster that my fingers and I have to keep going back to remove the letter for the next word that I have typed before I get the present word done.  Well, you could not go back with the old manual typewriters so I always had mistakes and the goal was to type the lesson mistake free and in a certain time.

We went on our camping trip with four man tents borrowed from the Scout Troop. We cooked on an open fire and had our adventures in and around the lake all day, then off to bed on the ground in the tents. Around 3 AM in the morning I decided that I would try to play Taps on a bugle that one of the students in my tent had brought. Please note: I can not play any musical instrument; never have never will!  You can well imagine the horrible racket I made with that bugle while everyone was trying to sleep at three in the morning.

My typing teacher came out of his tent and hollering "Stop that racket, I am gong to kill the person responsible for waking me up!!" Then he saw me and said  “Snider either go jump in the lake right now or fail typing!” I jumped in the lake at 3 AM!!  It was cold and sort of frightening but I just did what I was told.
Later back in class at school he laughed and asked me “Now there is no way I can fail you in typing class is there?” My answer “NOPE!!”  True Story, every word, I swear! I just thought I would share this so you would know what a labor of love, and I do mean labor, typing the things you read is for me.

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