Typing class in middle school was my first and only C and I cried about it for weeks.

Askye, please do us all a favor and TAKE your phone with you when you go out. I worry about you on the slick roads when not feeling well. Please take it. I am glad you figured out the branch and key solution!

askye, what a crappy way to start the day. I hope it gets better! Curling up and watching the last of The Librarians sounds like a great idea. I ought to do that too. I'll watch them with you, virtually.

I never learned to type "properly". I did my homework in 6th grade on a manual typewriter, typing with my left hand because my right arm was in a cast. I type well enough now to do my job, but I'd never make it as a secretary.

I don't think my tiny rural high school even offered a typing course. But I would have refused it anyway. I didn't take any of the Home Ec courses the girls were expected to take, because I'll be damned if I'm going to school to learn to be somebody's "helpmeet". And now I can't sew or cook, but I'm not some redneck's wife either, so that's cool. High-school me is quite satisfied with how things turned out. Except now I don't have a wife either, so I really need to learn to cook and sew. I got what I wanted, but not necessarily what I needed.

Maybe I just need a wife. I'm trying to get G. to marry me, but she still likes guys. Hmpf. Heterosexuality is foiling my plans.

We all, boys and girls alike, had to take all the home-ec, shop, art, stuff. We couldn't opt out. It was fine. I didn't really learn how to sew, but I can do a practical button sewing, hemming (not that well, but well enough). I'm not entirely sure I learned it in home-ec, though. I have a general idea about how to handle powered tools safely, so, that's good. Also, I made a set of bookends in shop that my sister still uses, so I was pretty amused by that some thirty years later. Also, my batik bird got hung outside the principal's office.

Our typing class was pretty evenly matched, gender-wise. It was mainly a vo-tech class, which track seemed pretty well balanced from what I could tell.

I took home-ec in jr. high cuz it seemed like fun. And my senior year of high school, I chose physics over typing. Then they re-worked the schedule a couple weeks into the school year, and a section of typing opened, so I grabbed it. I could type well enough to type my own papers in college, but I' a better file clrk than sectretary.

Secretaries don't really type anymore, though. Most people type their own stuff and we edit and format. I only type my own projects.

Incidentally, does any one know the deal with iOs and spell-check?

My mother once told me that she considered taking a typing class in high school, and her mother told her not to, because once an employer found out that she could type, the only thing they'd hire her as would be a secretary.

Typing was the best class I took in high school. It meant I could type my own papers in college and not have to pay someone else to do it for me. I think I still have the Brother manual typewriter that I received for high school graduation. (Yes, I went to college before the days of word processing.)

Seriously, except for e-mails most of what I type are process documents for the office and lots of spreadsheets.

But, yeah, I know what you mean, Hil. I ran into that even in the military. Despite the fact I was a trained electronics technician, they tried to assign me to full-time office work at my first command. Uh, no.

Oy, askye, that is a sucktastic day. Feel better!