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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Typewriters

Typewriters have a personality and their own stories to tell. The seasoned typewriter shows you its past through the scratches and worn out keys. I remember when I used to type out short stories and poems and hand them in to my teachers just for them to read so I could get feedback about whatever progress as a writer was percolating inside of me.

My math teacher's assistant would always mention the images that I was creating with my words, which always made me feel happy and accomplished. The poetry I wrote for her to read was not the best by any means, which was fine by me, since the imagery was the goal of my writing in the first place. I wanted the reader to get sucked into whatever story I was trying to tell.

I kept a journal during all this time. I started it in the first grade and I write in it to this day. I am almost in my 30's and I have over a dozen notebooks and diaries documenting the various times of my life. I sit back sometimes and read about my various adventures: "Katie-the junior/high school outcast, Katie: the outcast who is now a single mother with a special needs child."

I have always been the outcast and a huge dork at heart. I have always known that the only person who would ever be able to understand me would be my child. Not that I was ever in a rush to have children. I just always knew they would be the only one/s to really understand me.

Then came my daughter Alexis and so much of my inner turmoil calmed down. It can be really hard to be depressed when I get to look at her face and hear her laugh and watch her play. She is the only sign I have been given that G-d exists, and any time I am feeling down, all I have to do is tickle her or pull her close in my arms and everything inside me starts to calm down.

I wish I could write out my latest short stories on a typewriter, but I have laptops instead. Efficient but cold and scientific. I never know if any of the emotion I put into my writing online comes across as well as they could if one were reading it from a zine composed on an old battered typewriter.

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