Has Come Across Your Type Before

(This took place the year our school began requiring all freshmen students to take a computer basics class. I’ve learned all this stuff already, but one thing in particular, touch typing, I learned how to do when I was in the second grade. Evidently I’m the only one in the class who knew how to do it.)

Teacher: [My Name], I told you all that you aren’t allowed to surf the Internet until you finish your assignment! You’re going to fail this class if you don’t do your work!

Me: “It’s just typing. I already completed it.”

Teacher: “You can’t just look at the keyboard and do it! You have to learn this from memory!”

Me: “Which I’ve already done. In the second grade.”

Teacher: “No second grader has that kind of patience!”

Me: “I did. We had a computer lab period in school and the only fun game they had installed on the Macs taught touch typing, so I was an expert by the time school ended in June.”

Teacher: “Okay, if you’re so good at typing, type this sentence into a word document!”

(I prop the paper up in front of me, throw my jacket over my hands and the keyboard so that it was obvious that I wasn’t cheating, and quickly type the entire paragraph with minimal typos, which I instinctively corrected right away anyway.)

Me: “If you want, I can type up the entire book you got that from for you. I find typing to be therapeutic!”

Teacher: “Never mind… Just go back to the Internet.”

(She never questioned later when I also proved to be quite well versed in everything else she tried to teach, or when my classmates would come to me for help with their Power Points. I guess I was fortunate to have come from a house with a home computer before they became something every family had.)