Why Typing With Two Fingers Made My Father More Successful Than Everyone Else

Oh So Clear

You meet the surgeon. He seems smart, experienced, reassuring.

Then, just before the operation, he pulls out the scalpel and clutches it with both fists in a two-handed toddler’s grip.

Now, he might be a perfectly competent surgeon. But wouldn’t part of you wonder why someone who spends every day cutting people open never learned to hold the knife properly?

My father was that surgeon. Only that he operated on books. That’s right, he was a writer. But he never learned to touch type. His entire life, he just wrote book after book using hunt-and-peck typing.

I, on the other hand, learned touch typing as a teen.

In the beginning, my keyboard would clack in isolated taps — like soft rain striking a tin roof, each drop distinct. But as I pushed harder, one day it turned into a steady single uninterrupted downpour of keystrokes: tktktktktktktktktktktktktktktktktktktktktk…

It took effort. Lots of effort. I didn’t have Keanu Reeves’ Matrix dildo to ramp into the back of my head to upload the skill into my brain.

But I mastered it. I achieved speeds that should be declared illegal. Fast enough that thinking became externalized. Thought and — bam! — there it was on the screen. I ran that system hard. I flogged it like it had slepped with my wife.

Now, it’s twenty years later. I’ve been living with a chronic typing injury for well over a decade, and touching a keyboard still feels like fishing my own giggleberries out of a turning meat grinder.

So who was using the tool correctly?

AI is the fastest keyboard ever built

My father wrote his entire life, well into his 70s, until the day he died. I, meanwhile, permanently destroyed my arms in my mid-20s and had to switch to speech-to-text. And back then, speech-to-text wasn’t what it is now. It was more like adopting a parrot with someone’s amputated thumbs stuck in its ears — you had to spend a ridiculous…