There is a law of nature which states that libraries must smell of pee. The main library at IU is no exception, though until today, I had thought the pee smell was limited to the 5th floor. Not so. I just got back from the break room, where I bought a PepsiCokesodapop, in hopes that some more caffeine might wake me up. The break room–the place where everyone eats and hangs out–suddenly reeks of urine.
O ick.
I spent the afternoon transcribing and scanning a new batch of letters from late March 1920.
The letters from March 28 and March 29 include descriptions from Esther’s mother, father, and sister of the first Palm Sunday tornado outbreak, which fascinated me. Storms, especially tornadoes, are terrifying. I did some Googling, and 39 people died in Indiana during that particular outbreak. More than 150 people were killed by tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama, and Georgia.
There has historically been a good bit of coal strip mining in this area (Coal City is just up the road). So, it was not surprising to have several pieces of it turn up in my yard; it lies close to the surface here. I was surprised at how colorful it is, though. I always thought coal was uniformly black, but this has lovely reds and blues and yellows. It also flakes apart into thin layers. I’m going to try to separate more layers, without crumbling them, because I think they’d make an interesting addition to an art project.
On a good day, and when I’m warmed up, I can type 90+ words per minute. I find that a little mind-boggling. Sometimes, when I’m tap-tap-tapping along, I think of Mrs. P., my high school typing teacher.
I didn’t want to take typing. It was considered a secretarial/business class, which I had absolutely zero interest in. I begged and pleaded and whined and complained, but my mom insisted that I take one quarter of typing. “Just one quarter. It won’t kill you.” Computers were going to be the wave of the future, dontchaknow, and typing would be a necessary skill. I disagreed, because after three disastrous quarters of computer programming classes (that’s a whole ‘nother story), I sure as hell wasn’t going to go into any field that had any connection to computers. But mom insisted, so I took typing.
Enter Mrs. P. Mrs. P. taught typing, keyboarding, accounting, and career planning. Basically, all the classes I’d tried my damnedest to avoid. Mrs. P. was kind of short and kind of dumpy. She had closely cropped fakety-fake orange hair, orange lipstick, stubby little beringed fingers, painted on eyebrows, and fluorescent green eye shadow. She always chewed green gum, cracking it loudly while she talked, so that you could see all her fillings and the hardware of her dental bridge. One of her favorite “words” was “simular.” Her wardrobe consisted of polyester double-knit pants and bright, flowered polyester tops. At some point, she’d had breast cancer, and had had a double mastectomy. Occasionally, her prosthetics would go walkabout, ending up somewhere along her waistline.
I used to sit in typing class, staring at Mrs. P., unable to look away. She held some sort of horrific fascination for me. It’s a wonder I ever learned to type. It’s even more amazing when you consider the machines we learned on. The school had a few electric typewriters, but the typing room was mostly filled with old manual machines. They were truly awful. I have really small hands, and had trouble trying to span the keys and apply enough pressure to them. When I was able to manage both, my fingers would slip between the depressed keys and their neighbors. On the up-stroke, my fingers would become trapped between the keys. I constantly had cuts on my knuckles where they’d been scraped.
So it’s no wonder that I sometimes think of Mrs. P. while I’m typing. She was actually a pretty nice sort. It’s funny, but when I think of the high school classes that had a significant impact on my adult life, only two come to mind, and one of those is Mrs. P.’s typing class.
Thank you, Mrs. P. And mom, for forcing me to take that horrid typing class.
red paper boat 