Hello, world, it's me

Congratulate me, somebody. This piece represents my 25th blog posting as FiftySomethingMan.

In an era when milestones both real and imagined are celebrated virtually every day, it seems like someone should be showing me some attention. If Two and a Half Men can mark its fifth anniversary and President Bush can now count 1,250 consecutive days of being the worst president ever, I’d like to be recognized for reviving a humor-writing hobby I had left uncultivated for over 30 years.

With the current economic recession depriving me of almost all work-related fulfillment other than collecting a paycheck, I’ve found myself once again turning elsewhere to feel productive. This has happened before during similar slowdowns – in the eighties I taught myself to play the “Navy Hymn” on the piano, and in the nineties I attempted to revive the Spanish-speaking skills I had learned growing up in Miami. Neither of these hobbies stuck once job satisfaction eventually returned, though if I ever lose my notebook, need to find the library, or like to eat meatballs in South America, I might be able to get by.

Actually, I’m not sure yet that I’m comfortable calling this “writing”. That seems a little presumptuous, considering the quality of these things. I sure don’t want to call it “blogging”, as that makes me sound way more contemporary than any 54-year-old white guy has a right to be.

Maybe “typing” is the correct gerund. I’ve always loved to type, ever since my parents bought me a portable typewriter for my thirteenth birthday. I was fascinated with the way I was able to put words on paper in something other than my impaired penmanship. I started by simply copying other works, banging away with a single finger and using an all-caps style that would be considered extremely rude in the current age of communications. After a while, I got tired of looking for stuff to copy and found it easier just to make it up as I went along. At least it was a more productive use of a 13-year-old right hand than what I could’ve been doing.

I’m glad to see the skill of typing is still in use, even if it does seem underappreciated. When we have a need at work to input a large amount of keystrokes, we send the project as far offshore as we possibly can. I’m not sure how skilled these developing-world typists might be, but I do know we pay them little enough that they could hire a thousand people to key one word each to produce a document of this length.

I bought a kids’ typing program for my son when he was young, and diligently drilled him through the exercises, even though I suspected voice recognition or some kind of brain-scan interface would be in use before he needed the typing. I eventually gave up on the program and thought all was lost, until he got his own laptop a few years later. With instant messaging as the impetus, he’s become a flash on the keyboard. Chatting up the latest film release with all the cool kids on the Internet is somehow more rewarding than Mavis Beacon’s sparkling animated stars.

When I got my first semi-advanced cell phone a few years ago, I was thrilled to discover text messaging. At last I could practice my love of typing anywhere – in a serene meadow, on the edge of the Grand Canyon, even at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Maybe I’m missing out on some fabulous vistas there, but we’re talking about pressing buttons and watching letters appear on a screen!

Which brings me to my newest fascination, instant messaging, or “I am”, as the younger generation calls it. Even as I’m working on this piece here at the Wi-Fi-equipped grocery store down the street from my house, I’m able to type messages to my wife asking if she needs anything and just generally bothering and distracting her from her own work. She hates it, of course, as any sensible person my age should. But as someone who’s always been a little uncomfortable with one-on-one human interaction, I’d love to see more of it. Maybe one day we’ll all be carrying around little “knuckle-tops” instead of laptops, and we can exchange pleasantries with store clerks without ever saying a word.

The big down side, of course, for such rapid written communication as this is that the quality of the typing suffers in the name of speed. I have to read through instant-message transcripts as part of my job each day, and there rarely seems to be any effort to correct spelling as long as the general idea is transmitted. Occasionally it’s so garbled that I can’t tell what was intended; fortunately, this is only work so it really doesn’t matter. Most of what I’m reading is from our outsource sites, and they seem mainly interested in having a written albeit imperfect record of whooo told thm whta 2 do.

It does bother me though when such sloppiness is used in casual online conversations with friends and former coworkers who’ve been transferred to other sites. I had a very nice discussion with an old associate the other day in which we discussed our families, life in his new city and generally catching up on mutual acquaintances. As I prepared to sign off to meet up with my carpool partner who was leaving for the day, he asked how she was and told me to “say hell” to her. (We talk about work on the way home anyway, so there’s already plenty of “hell” and “damn” and “bastard”. One more mild epithet won’t be a chore.)

I think I’ll settle on calling this current exercise “laptopping”. It’s definitely more advanced than just typing, what with the control-S-ing and the alt-F7-ing, not to mention gripping and clicking my mouse instead of the similar-in-texture bagel just next to it. Plus, there’s the whole Internet connection thing, which allows me to show my typing to the world.

Assuming there’s someone out there listening. If so, can you please give me an indication that you are? The only comment I’ve received thus far was on my jokey analysis of health insurance, to which “vegasguy” pointed out that I’m “allowed to contribute to the HSA and take a 100% tax deduction and then pay any qualified medical cost with dollars that were tax-deductible and grew tax-free.” In other words, he didn’t get the joke.

Is anybody else getting it?