typing
So I type very fast. The last time I did a computer-based typing test, which was, jeez, nearly 20 years ago, I typed about 130 words per minute, and I haven’t gotten any slower.
The first time I became aware of how odd my typing sounds was at home one afternoon ten or fifteen years ago when my mom said “What’s that sound?” and I stopped typing to listen and couldn’t hear anything and she said “It stopped” and I said “Huh, I donno,” and started typing again and she said, “There it is again.” It may have taken one more iteration before I realized it was the typing she was hearing, but I remember her saying “That’s your TYPING?!?!” when we figured it out. :)
*Several* times over the years other family members, especially Ted’s family, have overheard my typing from other rooms and have gone “What’s that sound?” Ted, of course, knows what it is by now and can just tell them, but they’re inevitably incredulous. And I’ve always thought it was pretty funny, because to me, it’s just my typing and I don’t really hear it and have very little perception of what it sounds like to others. *I’m* aware of the pauses and moments between hitting the letters and the difference between hitting the space key (okay, admittedly, that’s not real noticeable) and things like that, so it’s always been pretty bemusing to me. I know I type fast, but unrecognizeably fast?
But the other week on my little writing retreat I guess I was really in the writing zone, or something, and I had something almost like an out of body experience. It was exceedingly brief, but there was this moment when for the first time ever I heard my typing the way other people do.
And it actually almost was a “what is that noise?” experience. Because holy cow, everybody is right. It doesn’t sound like typing at all. :)
I think what must have happened was that the desk was in a little nook-like space with a mirror right in front of me, and there was a hard floor in the room, and I think the echoes must have somehow pulled the sound into a place I don’t usually hear it from, and so I finally got to hear it how everybody else does.
No *wonder* everybody is incredulous. It sounds *weird*!
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(x-posted from The Essential Kit)