My Typewriter

This year, FPR hosted a student essay contest. We received some excellent submissions, and we’re running the top three essays this week, timed to coincide with Wendell Berry’s 91st birthday. Here is the winning essay.

I am writing this essay on a computer.

The computer I own costs $72.95 on Amazon, and the charger for it costs an additional $16.99. I did not pay for this computer—it was funded by my school, through taxes or donations or who knows, but it was a gift. As I consider my computer, I think of its faults and its good deeds. This computer was gifted to me in my freshman year of high school, when I went to my freshman orientation. It was placed into the hands of a sleep-deprived, coffee-addicted, brand new high schooler. I remember opening it for the first time, I remember examining its keys and realizing it was coded to make it almost impossible to log in. I remember being shocked by its short battery life, I remember setting up a system to power it, and squabbling over chargers because I always lost mine.

I cannot remember a time in school where I have not had a Chromebook or a computer of some sort. In elementary school we would go to the computer lab and learn how to type and code. In middle school they gave us Chromebook at the beginning of every class period and took them back when the bell rang. When I was in seventh grade, COVID struck, and I was sent home with a computer. When the pandemic ended and our lives returned from virtual to reality, they took away the Chromebook I had been given and gave me this one, the one I am typing on now.

This Chromebook seems to represent everything I find nauseating if I pause to think too deeply. The keys of this Chromebook are sticky from spilled soda and greasy chips. It is lined with cracks, and if you press too hard on the screen it stops working. Every time I look at it for too long, my eyes turn red and go as dry as the Sahara. You can still see the imprint of a tear on the touchpad, from that time when an algebra assignment broke me. Forever embalmed in this Chromebook’s hard drive is every email I have ever sent, each desperate “Spike” message I have ever inscribed to my friends during lockdown, every Buzzfeed quiz I have ever taken in a futile attempt to try to understand my own soul. On the Wendell Berry scale of technological innovation, as stated at the end of his essay “Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer,” my Chromebook scores a 2/9.

Alternatively, I have only ever owned one typewriter. My typewriter was given to me by my grandmother when I was in elementary school. She gave it to me for Christmas, and I distinctly remember on Christmas morning, sitting at the dining room table with all my cousins and my grandmother, marveling over my beautiful gift. And my typewriter is truly beautiful. It makes no attempt to be sleek and modern; it is a soft cream color and is lined with a dark teal blue. The keys are an ash gray, and the white letters nicely stand out against the dark color. On that Christmas morning, I remember running my fingers over the keys in a state of awe while my grandmother put a piece of paper into the top, adjusted the ribbon, and let me type.

I wrote so much on the typewriter. I wrote pages still at that dining room table, and when I brought it home, I wrote volumes: on my bed, at my desk, at the table. The typewriter weighs about 50 pounds, so it was incredibly inconvenient to take it out of its case or put it away, therefore it stayed out on my desk for years. Every time I write on the typewriter, I remember who I truly am—I am someone who enjoys pouring their soul into something. My writing has never been truly exceptional; I have never been a Shakespeare, but every time I write on the typewriter I feel like I have joined the ranks of the authors.

My memories of the typewriter are of writing character analyses of people I had dreamed up, of eating mango slices over the satisfying clicking of the keys, of adjusting the ribbon and changing the ink, of the joy of learning the inner workings of that truly marvelous beast: my typewriter. During the pandemic, my typewriter stayed out on my bed. I wrote numerous journals about my days. When I go back to read them they sound monotonous and average, but you can see the joy of my hands working as clear as day on the pages. The typewriter is so loud, too, that at night I would have to turn it off, so I wouldn’t wake up my family. Every night I would put it away with great sadness, thinking only of what other things I would write on it. The typewriter honed my writing skills. Every time I wrote on it I strove to be better. Shortly after receiving my typewriter, I bought a thesaurus and my parents bought me a dictionary.

The typewriter has a legacy, another reason why I love it. The typewriter was my great-grandma’s, my grandmother’s mother. I barely knew her, but the little that I do know about her paints a beautiful picture of her life. My dad always recounts that even when my “great-granny” had Dementia and could barely remember his name, she still remembered that he loved Fruity Pebbles and would always buy him some.

The typewriter scores, on the Wendall Berry scale, a 7/9. Its only losses are that it isn’t solar powered, and it is excessively large. My favorite point on the scale is, “It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.” This point is the one in which my typewriter is exceptional—not only has it not disrupted anything, it has brought me closer to my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my cousins, and my own soul.

The typewriter is almost the antithesis of the Chromebook. My Chromebook has rarely brought me such joy as typing on my typewriter. My Chromebook also has no legacy; it is not intertwined in the past. If I had to add something to the Wendell Berry scale, I would add that the new technology must have a story. The typewriter not only has brought me a story of family and of connections, it has allowed me to create worlds and journals and papers.

Meanwhile, my Chromebook? My Chromebook has not failed at its job, but it will never bring me a story of a good and worthy life. It will always just be a Chromebook, and a picture constantly focused on the future and advancement. In the end, I will always look more fondly on my aged typewriter than my supposedly “futuristic” Chromebook, which is, in reality, broken and cracked and greasy.

Image via getarchive.