Caveman to Computerman. Go ahead, rail against technology.
This T-shirt’s message made me laugh out loud.
Luckily, my dear wife Karen is accustomed to my shopping behavior, so she kept on eyeing her own interests in the fancy-dancy souvenir store in the toney Niagara Falls mall. So I had to point this particular message out, and grab my iPhone to capture the thought for later use.
The time is this morning of Nov. 1, when so many bloggers on WordPress appear to be starting something called NaNaNaNoNoNo or somesuch writing exercise. Wait, that’s my reaction to the task, not the name. Make that NaNoWriMo, cleverly but somewhat confusingly short for National Novel Writing Month. A whole bunch of scribes will be separately or sometimes jointly taking November to write a fiction book. Good luck, brethren! If you get your inner “War and Peace” out there, wow, you write fast. In a month that only has 30 days yet.
Back to the T-shirt in question.
The picture depicts a strange version of the familiar evolution-of-man chart, caveman slowly rising, standing proudly upright and then slumping back down until it’s a harried individual obviously sitting in front of a desktop computer.
“Something, Somewhere Went Terribly Wrong,” it declares.
Oh, ho! Evil technology exposed on a T-shirt.
I, of course, think the writing portion of worker-at-computer is pretty darn important.
Penmanship, not so much.
After that first laugh, the shirt makes me think of my own personal evolution of spreading my words.
I started with a pencil in my little grubby hand, nervous on the graduation from crayon, because I knew darn well I couldn’t even color within the lines. Copy those letters from the chart? M ….. A …… Or something that barely resembled those letters that would stick with me for life. Even when I graduated to pen and cursive for a sheet of paper with lines closer together, my penmanship didn’t improve all that much. In fact, sometime in the course of becoming a seasoned journalist, I reverted back to printing so I could read my own writing. The only time I ever write in script is when I’m forced to sign my name.
But I had the typewriter!
My parents got tired of teachers moaning about my bad penmanship, so when I was in junior high, they found an old manual typewriter somewhere, bought a bunch of paper, and told me to sign up for typing class.
I loved it. The rhythmic click-click-click in the rare moments when I was one with the class was music to me. Instead of essays and compositions they strained to read, my teachers got from me typed papers chock full of strikeovers. When those began to drag down my grade, my dad got me some whiteout. He worked at an office and knew about such a wonder.
When I went away to college to study journalism, my parents gifted me with an electric typewriter. The touch was so different! I didn’t have to pound the keys. And, when so many of my fellow first-year students struggled with the task of composing our first little stories on a keyboard instead of taking pen to paper, I had a big jump on the mechanics. And now I could fix my typos with a pencil and call it editing instead of cheating!
Up and down it went, for just a little while.
At the really big city daily where I worked part-time my last two years of college, they still used manual typewriters, which you fed with long rolls of paper called three-ply. When a copy editor was done with a story, said editor rolled it up, stuck it in a tube, and held it in the air so a copy aide such as me could grab it and stick it in a vacuum slot that shot it down to the press room. I was trained for making a deposit at the bank’s outer teller lines, too!
At the suburban twice-a-week paper where I started after graduation, everything had to be typed on an IBM Selectric. Editing had to be done with thin Magic Marker indicators to words placed carefully between the lines. In the press room, they ran the copy through a scanner.
Pretty snazzy writing instrument, no, my iPad fit with Logistics keyboard?
Then the suburban paper went to five-days-a-week and got computers to show how much it meant business. My first screen was dark, with green letters. I started my longstanding love affair with the delete key.
On it went. Never-ending.
Different city daily. Dark screen with orange letters. White screen with black letters. Better keyboards. More advanced operating systems. Laptops to take out to the action.
And now I sit in my recliner, writing my daily morning blog on my iPad, fitted with a Logistics brand, Bluetooth-enabled keyboard that doubles as a sturdy and handsome carrying case. It is very friendly. Soft touch. Easy-to-find delete key. Even the caveman in me digs it.
Mark Bialczak 
Pingback: I will call 2013 life-changing | markbialczak
Reblogged this on All About Drawing and commented:
:3
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What a great t-shirt, and I love your thoughts on it.
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Thank you, Izzi. Keep writing about pop culture and keep your head out of the sand, ma’am!
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Just saw this post on Opinionated Writer. Love it. But soft keypads don’t make the right noise for me.
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I enjoyed this post. I never took typing, I am not sure why but I do have about ten years worth of scribbled manuscript! A novel in a month is VERY ambitious indeed!
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Does your writing hand always ache at least a little? Thanks for commenting!
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Haha I do use a laptop now because yes my writing hand did ache badly!! So does sifting through piles of handwritten gold and having to type it :))
Your welcome!
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Reblogged this on The Literal Loudmouth.
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Thank you for the reblog. Literally, I have been known to be a Loudmouth. In fact, my brother-in-law calls our family the Loudczaks.
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I learned to type in high school back in the 70s…and it was the most useful skill I ever learned to date! The old school classes, making the keyboard forever in your memory I think were the best. Also, learning on an old electric, without correction tape made it really important to be accurate unless you wanted to tackle erasing without making a hole in the paper :).
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Yes, Sandy, I’ll never forget the click, click, click, space rhythm of typing class. And when everybody got the ding-zing of the manual bar return timed correctly, it always made me smile. I agree that it is a skill I have used every day of my life since. Thanks for reading my post. Mark
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Reblogged this on poohloversunite and commented:
How I love today’s technology :3
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Thanks for the great post!
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Thank you for taking the time to read my post and comment, Mr. Athiest. Much appreciated. Mark
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Reblogged this on HarsH ReaLiTy and commented:
Yes, the clicks of a typewriter or taps of a keyboard are music to my ears as well. Nice post and a great first re-blog for this month of writing! -OM
Note: Comments disabled here, please comment on their article.
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Thank you so much for your kind words, OM. I am honored to be your re-blog No. 1 for November.
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Great post. When I was in high school we learned about paste-up layouts at yearbook camp (which was really fun), but we were already working in Quark for design and copy. In college, magazines (my background) were already on to the early versions of InDesign. I can’t imagine writing and putting together articles without a delete key!
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I am a bit jealous that you got to go to something called yearbook camp in high school, Amy. I mostly was relegated to playing dodgeball … Seriously, it sounds like you were prepared for your life in the magazine world. Thanks for reading. (I did have to resort to the delete key a few times while typing my reply, of course.)
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I have that same keyboard for my ipad mini and I loooove it. People always stop and are like “what is that thing?! it’s amazing!” It has completely replaced my beast of a work laptop.
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Yes, it’s BINGO! when you discover the right mix of convenience and attractiveness. Thanks for coming aboard. I’m about to check out your blog, too.
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Mark … ah, the IBM Selectric. Fond memories! As I read this and pondered the subject of my next blog post, a variation of the old Geico campaign popped into my head: “Blogging — so easy a caveman can do it.” Maybe that’s another T-shirt!
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Brilliant. Want to go into a T-shirt business together? Remember my personalized McKeev-Is-40 gift from the wayback machine?
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Of course I remember that shirt! It’s in a place of honor at home. I believe the front says something like “Knowledge is Good.” Can’t believe that was, ahem, more than a decade ago!
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I had to go with my favorite quote from Faber College. It narrowly beat out “six years of college down the drain!” Yes, indeed, ahem is called for in the timing issue, too.
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