Steve Moseley

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school …” (thank you Paul Simon and your classic tune Kodachrome for getting us started today).

Much of the curricula I was confronted with in my small Nebraska high school has never, not even once, raised its head in usefulness in the six decades since, chemistry being most profoundly useless of all. I was helpless in the face of chemistry. So pathetic, in fact, Mr. Umbarger called me aside early in the course and offered gentle advice: “You know, Steve, if you drop this class by next Friday nothing will be hurt.”

I exaggerate my stories routinely. Not this one.

Algebra and geometry caught me nearly as intellectually flatfooted and, I am ashamed to say, even shop proved a vexation. Decades later son Aaron, by then an adult himself and one of those annoying types possessed of skills, common sense and manual dexterity to build or fix nearly anything (kid takes after his mom) blundered upon some of my old report cards.

“Pops!” he exclaimed in wonder, “I didn’t know it was possible to get a ‘D’ in shop. How do you even do that?”

My answer? It was easy, son. Zero aptitude exacerbated by minimum effort.

I had no clue about tools or what to do with them then and Good Wife Norma will quickly confirm my confusion has only deepened with age.

I did have an inexplicable way with words. Thank goodness for that, at least. Otherwise, a 35-year career in newspaper journalism would have been out, too.

As an aside to the many high school classes I sluffed off was what we termed in those dinosaur days ‘typing.’ We clicked away in a roomful of tables with ancient (well, they weren’t ancient at the time, I guess) and ponderous (think boat anchor) black Underwood manual typewriters into which we inserted actual paper. Paper was a commodity to which we had unlimited access to during those days, but for which there is scant use now.

What you did, see, was crank a piece of paper onto the roller, then make the keys leap about and clack furiously as you banged out words and numbers. Even punctuation, if you can believe that. No ‘go backward’ key to make typos and dumb stuff disappear as if by sorcery. Mistakes yielded two options (1) either slather on white-out ink, let it dry and type over the stuff or (2) yank the paper out, mutter words you didn’t learn from your sweet mama, roll in another sheet and start over.

A return key to begin a new line with a click? Goodness no. We had to actually ‘throw the carriage’ as they called it using our fingers.

Crazy, right? How crazy? Get this, these primitive machines did not plug into anything. No power cord at all. A person could just pick them up and walk away.

For some reason, typing demanded scant effort from me. I just goofed off in class, teased the girls and tormented our beleaguered teacher, Mr. Jerome Cox. A few years later when maturity finally dawned, Mr. Cox was revealed to me as the great educator and classy gentleman he’d always been.

What do you call typing now, I wonder? Word processing or something equally lifeless and institutional, I bet. Do students these days have ‘timed writings’ as we knew typing proficiency tests to be back when?

Progress was measured periodically when each of us was given the same copy with instructions to bang it out as quickly and accurately as humanly possible.

I didn’t take timed writings seriously either, until that last one where the mythical class typing title hung in the balance.

Classmate Jerri Elm was leader of our timed writing pack from the beginning and took a measure of pride in her efficiency, as she should.

But for reasons even I do not understand, with the lightly coveted championship on the line, this one last time I sat up straight in my chair, shut my smart mouth, adjusted my posture, flexed my fingers and took it seriously.

You can guess the rest. I came out of nowhere to edge Jerri for the Big Kahuna prize. She appeared to smolder just a bit behind steely eyes, but ultimately handled the outcome with dignity and silence.

Unable to conjure any future use for this obscure skill, I laughed it off at the time.

Then, much later at age 40 as a failed greengrocer, I began to make a living and feed our family thanks in large part to that very same high school skill. The happy story continues right up to composing these very words on a typically gray, damp, dismal Nebraska morning in March.

Turns out if you lack ability to peer into the future it helps to be dumb lucky. Who knew?

Bless you, Mr. Cox.

Sorry Jerri. Nothing personal.