Lessons from a younger generation

We own a very old (1930's) typewriter that I bought several years ago at a yard sale. We were recently doing some house cleaning and it was "rediscovered" by my sixteen year old daughter. I typed a sentence on it for her: Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. If you don't know why I chose that sentence, may I recommend that you find and read a copy of Ella Minnow Pea, a very amusing novel about the alphabet.

In any event, as we played with the typewriter, there were a number of functions of the machine that I took for granted, but had to show her. These included:

• how to use a Carriage Return to start a new line and move back to the left side of the page
• how to center words on a line
• how to make an exclamation point out of an apostrophe and a period

This episode brought home for me once again how different the world is in which this next generation is growing up. I'm not that old, but the difference of a few years can be pretty dramatic.