Photo prompt © Jeff Arnold
It took him months, but he stuck with it.
It took a lot of coffee, and a great deal of wine, and a good bit of yelling at the keys and cursing at the window, and a heap of crumbled sheets of paper flung across the floor in balls he sometimes let stay there, staring dejectedly at the ceiling as he wished to do, too.
A million times he wanted to give up.
He didn’t.
Not when he had promised her he’d write her story.
One finger at a time or not, he was going to learn how to type.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Na'ama Yehuda 
He might need to learn to operate an offset litho machine as well
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Oh, poor dude … 😉 Let’s not tell him now … 😉
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Na’ama Y’karah,
It pays to learn the touch system. Hunting and pecking with one finger slows the muse to a crawl. You created an amusing visual.
Shalom and health,
Rochelle
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Thank you, Rochelle! Yeah, it can help to learn ANY OTHER WAY outside of the finger-hunt-peck-stuff … I never learned any official typing (I wish we had been taught, but we didn’t, other than playing on my mom’s typewriters as children when the summer break got so long that even pecking on a piece of paper was better than getting in trouble … which usually did not evolve beyond the first two letters … ;)), but I’ve typed and typed so much that I don’t really need to look and my fingers are pretty good at finding the keys … even though I’m not really ‘trained’ in any way. I think the finger peck would drive ME bananas, too! 😉
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What a delightful story, Na’ama. You can feel his frustration but also his love of his girlfriend, that need not to let her down. Gorgeous
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Thank you, Lynn! I was hoping this would come across – you got it exactly! 🙂
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Bless him. I hope he succeeds!
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Me three! 🙂
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And I bet he’d have found it so much easier if the keys ran A to Z… the complaint of a man I once knew.
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LOL! I guess there’s that as a possibility … the truth is we’d probably adapt to any kind of ABC’ing on the keyboard … and probably finger type at first anyway … 😉
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I did once read why we’ve ended up with the qwerty keyboard but have since forgotten. I think it has something to do with frequency of letter use. But it wasn’t developed by an English speaker/writer, so maybe it doesn’t quite confirm. As for people using other alphabets/writing systems… I don’t know 🙂
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Yes, it has to do with frequency of letter use and the position (and reach) of different fingers. The position of letters in other languages that have DIFFERENT letter symbols (i.e. Hebrew) follows similar ‘frequency’ rules, too, I believe. If you change your keyboard to, say, “French”, the position of letters changes, too. Fascinating, ain’t it?
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My first laptop had been manufactured for sale in South Africa. I had to change several of the keys.
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Oh, wow! It was in Afrikaans?
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Probably. I’m guessing so. I had to change time zones and countries and everything.
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Yeah. I hear ya!
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🙂
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🙂
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Some promises are easier to make than to keep…
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Indeed! And yet, there are those who work hard to keep them anyway! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by Ceayr! Hope you are doing well in these crazy times.
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Glad I dropped by… thanks for the pointer to Friday Fictioneers, Na’ama!
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🙂 Glad you’d dropped by, too! And … yes, FF is a great little prompt family. It’s a fun one!
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Ah, that is a romantic one. He will stick with it and the typing will get better.
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Yep. I predict it will! And if the typed pages on the side are any indication, he’s improving already! 😉
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Practice and hard work will get him through.
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Yep! 🙂
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It sounds as though the goal is worth the effort he’s having to make.
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I hope so! It sure sounds so! 🙂
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This is simply lovely. If all fails perhaps he should a pen and ink.
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Yes, I thought of suggesting that, but he was adamant that it had to be ‘professionally done’ … 🙂
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One finger at a time . . .reminded me of my dad’s hunt and peck system. He actually got pretty good at it over time.
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🙂 I bet he did, Linda! It is delightfully sweet to see people willing to learn something new, difficult as it can be, and clumsy as they may feel. 🙂
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Intriguing. Wondering who she might be.
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Ah, I don’t know, but it seems she was important enough to suffer through a learning curve for … 😉
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Wonderful story, Na’ama. I’m sure as he continues to persevere, he will learn where all the keys are and his two finger typing will be like most people today 😉
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two finger typing is double the efficiency of one finger typing!!! 🙂
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Right! I, on the other hand, was lucky enough to have an obligatory typing class in grade 9… so glad today for that!
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We didn’t have that … so … fortunately my fingers figured things out for themselves at some point, in a reasonably speedy manner … 🙂 Then came the teeny keyboards on phones and one-finger-method applies again … 😀
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I am amazed at the speed some people have using two or four fingers, to tell the truth. ‘Course, I’d still whup their butts with my 60/wpm 😉
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Ha! I don’t know how fast I type (not terribly fast, not slow, either, adequate for my writing needs, certainly – it is also what I am STUCK with for my writing needs, so there’s that … ;)) – but the phone stuff is just miserable in comparison…. no matter how fast these kids are with their thumbs … 🙂
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i hope she’s worth all the troubles. like they say, there are so many fishes in the ocean. 🙂
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True, though … I hope she is worth the trouble to HIM. 🙂
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He’s certainly set himself a hard task but it’ll be worth it in the end if he sticks with it.
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Yes, I hope it will be worth it in the end! If nothing else, in developing character … (sorry, had to pun … ;))
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Might be time for a voice-to-text program, whether one finger or not.
Determination has its place, obstinacy and self-misery does not.
Na-ami, how pleasant!
Randy
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Ha ha! Yes! Voice to text! Perfect! 🙂
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Sweet, that’s dedication!
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Yah! It is! 🙂 Thanks for reading and commenting!
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With your story I saw a heavily disabled guy working at a labour of love. Lovely
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Thanks, Michael! I love how stories evoke their own visuals in us as we read. It is partially why I tend to like books more than movies (not that I don’t watch movies, but it is not the same …). 🙂
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Sweet, loved it. 🙂
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Thanks, Susan! Glad you did and thanks for stopping by and commenting! Na’ama
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Every new skill has those moment of frustration, persistence being the key. I enjoyed the lead up to the end expecting him to finish his manuscript – but he not even started typing.
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Thanks, James! Yes, new skills take practice and when there’s a good ‘goal’ or motivation, it makes the dreary aspects of drill and train feel less daunting (one hopes!). I think he’s gotten a few pages typed by now … 😉
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