The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog

“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”

There.

I can still do it after all these years, even if my works are rather gummed up with cobwebs and old, oily but dry dust and my “j” and “u” hammers sometimes jam together. I remember that sentence well. For those unfamiliar with typewriters that sentence was the one that was used to test typewriters as it uses all the characters in the alphabet. And it was the one that Mary typed on me the day she chose me out of all the others on display in the shop.

I do, of course, remember much else, and although I’m not much given to introspection if you were to unravel my ribbon and read the letter sequences from it what wonderful life tales you would find!

Generally, I try to avoid retrospection and if I find myself drifting into it I’m usually able to pull myself back out and into the present, but being stuck here in this gloomy, dusty and cobwebbed corner with no company there’s nothing to provide me with any stimulation. And nothing to do except revisit old memories.

I well remember Mary, though. She was a lovely girl, and bright too – no less than seven “O” levels and had her mind set on becoming a secretary. Which is where I morphed into a productive being, I suppose. She was doing a secretarial course and needed to get in some typing practice at home, so her parents brought Mary to the shop where I sat on the display – all new and gleaming – and waiting in anticipation of an exciting life.

So imagine my delight when Mary chose me! We went straight back to her home and I was given pride of place on a small chair in her upstairs bedroom, snuggled up between her soft toys and dolls.

And what a very happy home that was, and in the remembering I now realise that it was the happiest time of my life. Mary, a gentle girl full of the zest for life and me, full of exuberance and excited expectation. Over the years that followed I felt both privileged and honoured to help her express herself through happy times, sad times, her many tribulations of first love and subsequently her marriage and the birth of her child.

But back to the beginning. She used to take me down to the dining room every evening after tea for her typing practice and we got to know each other very well. I was, as you might expect, initially a bit nervous and so on my best behaviour but after a while I must confess to being a little mischievous every now and again. Purely to have bit of fun you understand, nothing too outrageous. As her keystrokes got faster and faster I would sometimes bring two hammers up together so that they jammed before striking the platen and she had to stop and flick them to get them to drop back into their resting places. She never cursed or swore at this, however, just grunted and gave them a flick. Oh what things we wrote together! Sometimes she copied from her printed workbook and sometimes she wrote her own little love stories. Always with a happy ending, of course, and how I enjoyed those!

I always appreciated how she ordered her thoughts before tapping my keys and I never failed to enjoy tinging my bell for her as my carriage approached the end of its travel. Eventually, of course, she had to face her final exams and what pride I felt in learning that she had scored the highest mark ever achieved in the typing exam and was awarded an A+! Am I overly flattering myself that I had a hand in her success? No, I don’t think so.

And then, quite suddenly, it all stopped. For weeks and weeks my cover remained untouched and I concluded that she must have forgotten all about me. But eventually, it turned out that I needn’t have worried.

One afternoon she carried me down to the dining room again and put me next to a big pile of handwritten papers, changed my ribbon, brushed over my keys and letter hammers and off we went, for hour after hour. And we kept this up day after day and into every evening until we were both exhausted. But by then I had lost count of the number of pages we produced and again, just as suddenly, it all stopped when Mary was awarded her degree.

And somehow I just knew that life would never, ever be the same again.

True I was brought out again occasionally and gave expression to small items. Labels, invitations to her wedding and the baby’s baptism soon after. But it was just after the last thing I ever produced – a change of address notification – that I found myself in a cardboard box along with a few other odds and ends and unceremoniously dumped on the pavement outside a charity shop one late, rainy and windswept Sunday afternoon.

And I never saw Mary again.

Can you imagine how I felt? The blow my pride suffered? After years of dedicated service to then be cast out like an old, chipped china cup? Oh how I hurt.  But hope springs eternal as is sometimes said, and a while later I was rescued by an old chap and taken away to join his collection of vintage typewriters and, I’m guessing, serve as a source of spare parts. So now what’s to become of me? Shall I remain complete and whole as I slowly rust away to nought or shall I be broken up for spare parts with my body and soul stripped bare?

Who knows?

But for now here I am. There is nothing I can do now to shape my future. It is in the hands of others. Condemned to sit in this dusty, cobweb-ridden corner of an old shed, on my own except for a few dead flies and some spiders. And my memories, of course. My cover has long-since been lost, my dry, frayed ribbon now sags dejectedly in its metal cradle and my rubber platen is dried-out and hardened with age and the battering of so many, many hammer blows.

All I have ever produced is now mostly consigned to the past and irrelevant.

So I can do no more now than reflect that my existence has not been wholly futile.

But I flatter myself that I’ve played my very small part in helping to form that past.

Which leads, inexorably, to the present.

What’s to become of me?

I have no choice but to wait and see.

To you, I say live your life with love, compassion, hope and optimism.

But for now,

Goodbye.