Typing Matters

Another excursion from the normal topic of juggling...

I took a typing class in high school but mostly cheated by starting on the timed tests before the fairly senile teacher noticed and continued after the buzzer, too. Many years passed and I was able to get through typing papers in college. I mostly kept my hands in the proper position but always looked at my fingers. Now, after 12 years of working in hi-tech, I can touch type pretty well. Except for when I chat with my sister, Ruth, I type faster than most of my chat buddies.

Anyway, the reason I've been thinking about typing is a conclusion I recently made about online dating, one of my recent favorite pasttimes. First of all, I get really turned off by poorly written profiles. The kind of woman I'm looking for can express herself well and is conscientious about her spelling and grammer.

But where typing skills really come in handy is with chats. A good chat is like a good conversation and should flow nicely. If one side can't type well, there is a lot of dead time and the chat can feel tedious. I'm all for informal chatting and even though I'm fairly compulsive about my spelling (though rarely use spell checkers), I am quite forgiving in chats because they are an informal medium. But sometimes online dating chats can be quite painful because of the lack of typing ability and the woman comes across to me as uneducated because she can barely get a sentence out.

But am I really only interested in women who can type well? Aren't there more important things than having good secretarial skills? Well, you know how important first impressions are. Anyway, I hope that women are at least impressed with my typing...