The Rebellious Typewriter

The typewriter was incorrigible. Alphonso wasn't quite sure why he kept it. It had a will of its own, he had often told friends, and it wouldn't stand for having its keys pressed or its carriage return lever slapped. It had always been a source of discontentment and Alphonso often wondered why it still sat in its place on the spare desk in the corner of his writing room. For some reason, it meant a great deal to him, despite all the frustration it had caused.

Sometimes the typewriter refused to budge. Alphonso could pound on the keys with all the strength he could send through his fingertips, and not a character would end up on the page. On other occasions, when he punched "D," on the paper a "P" would appear. The type bars would get stuck together, the ribbon spools would jam, or the type guide would cause one or more letters to be offset. There was always a major problem with the typewriter, but Alphonso held out hope that one day, with the proper care, it would work perfectly.

He had tried to repair the typewriter himself on numerous occasions, spending hours looking at the inner workings of the ne'er-do-well machine. He cleaned some parts, replaced others and oiled it well. It sometimes worked for two or three pages before rebelling again.

"You're a typewriter," Alphonso would lament. "I'm a writer, and a very good one. I could do great things through you if you'd only submit to me."

And for a while, the lecture seemed to work, until the typewriter would seem to forget the lessons it had learned just hours before. The malfunctions would begin again, forcing Alphonso to move on to another machine that better understood what a typewriter was made to do. He wrote great novels, short stories and poems with the typewriters that were willing to obey the fingers that pressed their keys.

One day, Alphonso packed up the typewriter and took it to the town dump. He took it out of its case and pointed its keyboard in the direction of the mounds of refuse. And there, he pleaded with it.

"Look, just look at this place. Look over there, about midway down the pile, do you see that? That is an Underwood Number Five, and over there, that's a Williams! They've all ended up here, and here they'll stay. Why? Because they wouldn't do what the fingers told them to do either! Is this where you want to end up? You don't have to, but if you do, it's because you decided to!"

It seemed to have worked. From that day forward, the strong-willed typewriter began to understand that being a typewriter involved giving in to the desires of the typist. Alphonso wrote a number of good pieces with the once rebellious machine. Though it never produced what it could have if it had surrendered earlier, it was used to the extent it could be used, and when it finally wore out for good, it did not go to the dump. It kept it's special place in the writing room where the patience of it's owner had seen fit to leave it.

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Contributed byStephen F. Pizzini
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