my foremost skill, now archaic

       Mr. Metzelaar’s class, eighth grade, Creston Junior High, the Bronx. It was the most useful, most relevant, most applicable class I took during all my schooling. Well, until somewhat recently, that is.

      Sandwiched between beginner-level Spanish and dreaded algebra, Mr. Metzelaar’s class was “Introduction to Typing.” It was the 45-minute, three-times-a-week place where I learned where to put my fingers on a keyboard and, coincidentally, how I could make a living.

      At least at first, I don’t think the keyboard in the class was actually connected to anything. And maybe, right at the beginning, it wasn’t even a keyboard. It could have been just a piece of paper with that bizarre arrangement of letters drawn in pencil on the sheet — q-w-e-r-t-y and so on.

      It made no sense, at least then, at least to my 13-year-old mind. Who knew the design dated back to the 1860s, when the first mechanical typewriters had metal arms that would jam if you typed common letter pairs too quickly. 

      So QWERTY was engineered to separate commonly used letter pairs such as TH and HE so their typebars wouldn’t collide. Frequently paired letters were deliberately placed far apart. Rare letters like Q and Z were shunted way off to the edges because they’re used less often. More often-used letters were separated to help balance the workload between hands.

      Whatever the reason, I was a quick learner, unlike in algebra or Spanish. Soon, when we switched from paper to actual keyboards that were connected to actual typewriters — the ones we used, I think I remember, were old Remington uprights — I was typing pretty fast.

      As the school year wore on, there were tests in the class to see how many words per minute we could do without errors­­ — and I have the vague memory of being able, by the end of the my eighth-grade year, to hit 50 words or so per minute. 

      And no — well, maybe, very few — typos.

      The skill taught by Mr. Metzelaar in my eighth-grade typing class has stood me in good stead, through my own Remington upright and then through my portable Olivetti and then a word-processing Selectric and on into the era of the desktop computer and up through the age of laptops. As a journalist and a writer, I typed away for decade after decade, with all ten of my fingers — unlike many journalists from an older generation, who preferred two-fingered hunt ’n’ peck.

      QWERTY was always there for me and all my fingers knew precisely where home was.

      Then came the smartphone.

      Suddenly, instead of using all ten fingers, I needed just a thumb or maybe two. While there was still a keyboard of sorts, it was much too small for all ten at the same time. In this new, unwelcome mode I kept making typos, my clumsy oversize thumb frequently straying from the P to the O, and ending up with my writing Olease much too often.

      Although I only had to control two digits not the ten, I found the whole thing cumbersome, almost unnatural. And worse: after 65 years of typing, my most finely honed motor skill had been made redundant.

      Then, several years ago, a friend pointed out to me that little microphone symbol at the bottom of the little keyboard on the little smartphone. I had of course ignored it because I had no idea what it was doing there.

      Tap it, he said, and you can dictate. You don’t have to type at all. No fingers or even a thumb or two needed.

      I was thrilled. Mr. Metzelaar would be so disappointed.