Qwerty Monster

Idea for a story: A farmer teams up with a pirate to save a princess from an evil robot who is his father...

When I was little, maybe six or seven, I went to a Tigers game with my dad. After the game he agreed to buy me a jersey. Though we lived in Ohio, a state with two professional baseball teams, and my father was a devout Detroit fan, I selected a Cubs jersey, mostly because I thought it was cool looking. And it was cool looking—a satiny material of royal blue with nifty white and red stripes at the ends of the sleeves. I was young, but I was pretty sure I had the best shirt of anybody I knew.

Sometime later—I am not sure how long, those jerseys last forever—I was playing football with the big kids from my neighborhood. Most of them were the older brothers of my friends and neighbors. The point is, I didn't know them very well and they were all at least twice as tall as me. The other important thing to tell you is that I was absolutely dominating the game against them. Carrying the ball, surrounded by a group of three or four big kids, they kept missing me. They would dive, I would run, and they would miss me and roll onto the grass, laughing. Even if they got a hand on me, my Cubs jersey was apparently too slippery to hang onto and they would fall and lose their grip. It was hysterical. It was almost as though they were letting me evade them, like they were purposely throwing the match; I was that good. I mentioned that my Cubs jersey was awfully hard to hang onto, and that would explain why I was so difficult to tackle on this particular day, you know, so they wouldn't feel too bad. And they agreed. The jersey combined with my guile and quickness was making it damn near impossible to catch me. It wasn't fair, but that's how it was. I guess they should have gotten their own jerseys.

Sometime after that—I don't know, a week, three months—we were going to play again, only this time my jersey was in the dirty clothes hamper. The hamper was a wicker container painted blue, with a blue vinyl lid. I hated the hamper. It was where my favorite clothes went for what seemed like ever. I am sure my mom did laundry often, but to a boy who believed that certain garments had magical powers, it didn't feel often enough. I have always been the type to have favorite garments that I will wear for days before changing. I'm fairly superstitious, and messing with your outfit when you're on a good streak is luck suicide. Anyway, I asked if I could get my jersey back out of the hamper. I was told no.

I pleaded with my mom. I explained that the big kids couldn't catch me in my jersey, that I needed it, for my safety really. Her answer was still no, which is understandable—I had probably been wearing it for the entire previous week. But this was important. If she would just look out the window she would see that these were the big kids.

She remained unfazed. She explained that the jersey had nothing to do with my abilities, and if I had been able to evade them before, I could do it again. This, of course, made no sense whatsoever. Not only were these kids big enough to be able to outrun me, but they had all agreed the shirt had been the difference. I remember that very clearly. Alas, I was left to fend for myself, thrown to the wolves sans jersey like an ordinary little kid.

Now that I am older, I understand what my mom was trying to tell me—that it is what's inside that counts, that the uniform does not make the man. However, to this day I still don't believe it. Like most artists, I have a vivid imagination, and I often use it to imagine myself doing something amazing. Unfortunately, my dreams are rarely accomplished by hard work or discipline or any of those qualities we speak of at people's funerals. Instead, the secret to my success is almost always a possession I covet.

I will fixate on said item, and I will become convinced that without it I will be unable to move, all my future plans hinge on having this item. Sometimes it is a garment, like a new pair of shoes, or a hat. Sometimes it is a bicycle part, or perhaps an entire bicycle. It is often an art supply, typically related to oil painting which I do about once a year. Most recently it was a typewriter.

Even though I have never written more than a few short stories, I still feel in my heart that I am destined to write novels, plays, and other works of fiction and, of course, to be famous for doing so. I think about it all the time. It's quite perverse, spending so much time pondering something I never actually do. It's actually a lot like being a virgin again. And as with losing my virginity, I am constantly conceiving of ways to get myself to write. Unfortunately, as with losing my virginity, it seems like it's taking forever.

I have pretty good excuses. For one thing, I am a painfully slow writer. I agonize over word choice. Also, I am pretty moody about when I will write. For a long time I could only write if I had complete silence, and it was early morning. I certainly couldn't write if anyone else was around. It's getting better, but I still have to limit the sound to instrumental music.

Lately I have taken to my studio to write. It is (usually) quiet, there are no dogs or people or telephones or even internet. The only drawback is that I must take the laptop with me, a fact that is unpopular with some of the Tetris-playing members of the household. Furthemore, if the computer was reserved for something legitimate it would mean that I would have to wait to use it! I don't know if I can explain this to those of you who are not artists, but having to wait when you are inspired is just about the most uncomfortable feeling there is. It is more or less mental constipation. And the longer you must wait, the less likely anything is going to come out of it.

Considering these issues, I hit upon a brilliant idea, one that would eliminate my hoarding of the computer and also fulfill my desire to purchase a new device that would finally provide me literary regularity. I became convinced that a typewriter was the missing link in the chain between me and greatness. It was one of those ideas that, after I thought of it, seemed so obvious that it was amazing it had been overlooked for so long. At last I would be afforded the freedom to travel the world, writing machine in hand, recording events in person, fashioning stories about the people I encounter. No longer would I have to sit in front of a dull-eyed screen, arguing with spell check about whether douchebag is a word. Finally I would know the joy of working without the crutch that is the delete key. I began researching typewriters that very day.

Whenever I am about to buy something that I know almost nothing about, I will progress through a series of beliefs that reflect the amount of knowledge I have been able to accrue by googling the word.

I will begin by saying that I should just get a cheap one, since I am only a beginner. That way, if I don't like it I'm not out a bunch of money. Besides, a true artist doesn't need fancy equipment to do their work.


Honey, where is the doorstop?

Next I will realize that for only a little more money I could actually get a pretty nice one, and it seems a shame to spend good money on something that might not be of very high quality, especially if I'm just going to turn around and upgrade anyway. I believe a person gets what they pay for, especially if what they pay for is a really hip vintage model.


Oh, this old thing? Wes Anderson said he wasn't really using it anymore.

After that I will begin to covet the extremely high-end models that are needlessly ornate and well out of any initial price range I imagined. I will not pretend that I think it is a good idea to purchase one of these high-enders, but I will spend the next 72 hours on ebay looking for deals.



Do you have anything with jeweled dragons on the sides?

Often what happens next is I am unable to reconcile my wish to own said object and the cost of the model I have decided is my fate, (usually due to some random article I read online). After a few weeks I will have forgotten about said object altogether. However, sometimes I get lucky. In this case, I was at my friends' house when I mentioned my desire to own a typewriter, whereupon my friend Becky produced two typewriters from her attic. I left with a 1943 Smith-Corona portable in perfect working condition.


Note: Not the actual typewriter. This one is a professional actor.

This is the part where I tell you how the typewriter has changed my life, that my dreams are in the process of being realized. Well, I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but I have had my typewriter now for a week and I have yet to complete a single thing with it. Don't get me wrong, I like using it. I love being able to look out the window instead of into the blue light of pixels. But I guess I still need to think of the stories before I can sit down and type them, they aren't just locked away in the aura of the machine. And this is merely the cognitive aspects of writing. Not surprisingly, physically using my new instrument is taking some getting used to, and it is also just not capable of doing some things that I rely on fairly heavily.

To say that the typewriter foregrounds my weaknesses is an understatement. Firstly, I am an abomanible speller. Of course, the typewriter cares not if I can't hit the keys in the proper order,* laying bare all the mistakes one makes along the way so that you end up with words like anoutmoded or unfamiar. I am also not a strong typist. I have good days and bad ones, but unless I am fully caffeinated and inspired I think I work at about 40 words a month. I don't think I need to say that the spring-loaded action of a machine made before the television doesn't exactly speed up the process. But probably most important is the fact that I can't rearrange paragraphs as I go. I have been told my writer's 'voice' sounds natural or conversational, usually by my relatives, but I can tell you that writing is an agonizing process that takes me hours or days complete. Often I will write several paragraphs or even pages that only serve to get me to the first sentence of my articles. Almost always I will change my mind about how the pieces should begin, or end. I like to copy and paste sections back and forth, reading them both ways before I decide. In short, I kind of suck at writing. The computer helps me suck a lot less.

Still, I remain confident. I continue to envision myself working late into the night with a bottle and a handgun on either side of the machine, smacking an original manuscript into leafs of real paper. I think it is going to be good for me to spend less time plugged in to the internet-ready laptop and rely a bit more on memory, imagination, and my thrift store dictionary.

Many years ago, as I lined up across from the big kids in my normal, non-magical shirt, I knew I was going to come up short. I knew that what was special on that previous day was gone. I had felt the shirt's power, and I was worse off without it.

Whether it is true or not, you can't argue me out of my feelings, and you sure as hell can't stop me when I feel them. Sometimes, with the right tools, I'm just invincible.


* Even the word 'typewriter' is kind of tough. Most of it happens with the left hand on adjacent keys. I just can't get it right.