Learning to type in high school seemed vaguely valuable. Our fingers hovered over the keyboards while our wrists arched in a perfect arabesque until our teacher signaled us to begin. Then we were workers in a train yard, coupling the alphabet with commas and the dreaded prime numbers.
I never reached the teacher’s goal of 75 error-free words in a minute. The noise of others’ industry ricocheted in my skull and semi-paralyzed me. But I learned enough to make my mom jealous.