As I type with my eyes closed, as I often do, I think of my favorite high school teacher who made me type and retype student reporters’ stories onto clean, half sheets of newsprint. In the mid-1970s I was the editor of the high school newspaper, and the bonus of doing all that typing was that I got to do it on the first IBM Selectric I ever touched, the first typewriter I fell in love with, which lived in Mrs. C’s small office.
“If you can type clean copy with your eyes closed, you’re a pretty good typist,” said Mrs. C.
Over the years I worked hard to become that pretty good typist, my fingers growing stronger as they took me to other typewriters—from my mother’s small Smith-Corona portable to the gray elephants of Underwoods in their hard plastic skeletons at the college newspaper to the keyboard of my first Macintosh computer and many that followed.
But I never lost my affection for the Selectric, which, even without a correcting ribbon, was the smoothest typewriter ever made. (I still occasionally type on a 1960s red Selectric that lives with me.) I was never as fast on it as Mrs. C., though, or, I imagine, nearly as accurate.
After she was handed the responsibility for the yearbook and newspaper at a new high school in 1966, Mrs. C. sought guidance from editors at the local newspaper in our town. She’d been an English major and told me years later that she had known next to nothing about newspapers. But over the years she turned herself into a truly gifted journalism adviser who gave me and so many others some of our best lessons in reporting.
A couple of months ago, prompted by another one of her former students, I started looking for Mrs. C. a couple of months ago, wondering why, despite sending emails over the years, I had not heard from her.
She and her longtime partner had moved, so that was part of it. But when I recently reached her partner by phone, he told me that Mrs. C. was struggling—as had her mother and a sister—with dementia, though she is still in good health.
He said that Mrs. C. had opened my email and sat before the computer as if she intended to respond. “But she just couldn’t,” he explained. “I think she’s forgotten how to use a computer.”
He offered his help, and she refused it.
That’s when my eyes filled, and the crack in my heart widened a little for all those we lose in one way or another.
I wonder if, somewhere deep inside, her fingers still know their way around a keyboard, even if plaque in her brain is blocking the signals to make them perform.
When I knew her, Mrs. C. seemed at the height of her powers—not only a very clean typist but also a champion writing teacher, editor and encourager. She also advised the yearbook, and my dear friend Lisa, the yearbook editor, and I, editor of the newspaper, came to both cherish and fear Mrs. C’s left-leaning handwriting on copy she returned to us. She tapped my sister (also a leftie) to edit the yearbook two years later, and Donna got similar notes of correction and praise.
Though a serious taskmaster who did not tolerate sloppy writing or laziness, Mrs. C. had a delightful laugh and (years later she told me) loved “most of” her students. Even more important, she served as a springboard for many young people, including me, who bounced into college and later into careers as writers and journalists in print and broadcasting, teachers and professional communicators and much more.
She was not my only excellent writing teacher/adviser/coach, but she was one of the very best who installed important skills at a crucial point in my development as a writer—not least insisting on good typing habits.
My eyes are closed as I type this, remembering that petite, strawberry blonde-haired woman bustling around the small room in a high school in a small Northern California town where so many newspapers and yearbooks were born. I feel her still, leaning over my shoulder, noting a typo or praising a phrase.
My mother, who died in December, and Mrs. C. were two of my first, best editors, both gone now in different ways, both embedded in my writerly editor’s heart that—dear god, please—will carry on their lessons as long as I have breath and brain to do so.
Güd wrtr 