A Capital Offense

Wenceslas Hollar - Larger capital letters on a hatched background- A & H (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Between my day job and my blogging, I do a lot of typing.  This has created an intimate, love-hate relationship between me and my keyboard.  My biggest gripe is with the “caps lock” key.  Whoever put it where it is on the keyboard deserves the Darwin award in engineering. The key is in a prime location, right near the “a” and “s” keys, and yet it’s rarely used. Because of that, I hit it all the time when I don’t want it. The ratio between the number of times I actually want all caps and the number of times I get them is the same as the number of women who want to be with Brad Pitt and the number who actually are.

I taught myself how to type the summer my best “neighborhood friend” dumped me for cooler girls and then took typing in high school, I pretty much stick to the hunt and peck, or at least the "looking at the keys” school of typing.  So when I’ve been on a roll, typing like a beaver, I don’t know what I’ve done until I look up at the screen.  Half the time when I do, I discover that my sedate essay on the importance of hyphens is blaring its Upper Case lungs out at me like trillions of teeny Beliebers at you-know-who concert.

The CapsLock effect makes the most innocent message sound like it came from Charles Manson:

WHOEVER LEFT THEIR KEY ON MY DESK, PLEASE REMOVE IT OR I WILL HAVE TO GIVE IT TO RECEPTION.

WHERE DO I GIVE THE $5 FOR SUE’S PARTY?

THE WOMEN’S BATHROOM RAN OUT OF SOAP: NOTIFY MAINTENANCE.

Each time the CapsLock button is accidentally hit, I have to re-type the entire message in lower case, like a granny telling those young people to pipe down. The irony of the whole thing is that, by the time I get through going back and re-typing what looks like maniacal tirades about the need for more staples or the fact that I will be out on Friday, I am so incensed I feel like RE-TYPING THEM AGAIN AS MANIACLE TIRADES. There, that felt better.    

So, what to do?  Keep on re-typing like a maniac, or change jobs?  I could compose those teletype messages about breaking news at the bottom of television screens, or write those scary legal clauses that give whatever website you want to join the right to your first-born child, or, if you don't have a first-born, your second born.  Or maybe I could just become a VERY EXCITABLE PERSON. 

Capital idea.

Careful What You Wish For

NYC Subway 6 Train (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I married late, and spent years dating and hoping to find The One. One weekend, after I moaned about my single status even more than usual, one of my more philosophical friends said "it could be worse." I was not in the mood for this crasher of my Pity Party and gave her The Look.

That Monday morning started out like any other. I was on the subway, as usual. It was packed, as usual. The train came to an abrupt stop and someone bumped into me, as usual. I said nothing, also as usual. Then came something unusual. Or at least uncommon.

     "Say excuse me!" said a male voice.

I did what I always do when there’s conflict on the subway. I looked down at whatever I was reading, which, in this instance, was my shoes. (This was in the days before mobile devices.)

     "I didn’t touch your girl!" said a different male voice.

While focusing intently on the "current events" page of my reading material, namely, the new scuff mark on the toe box of my pumps, it began to dawn on me that this exchange was happening very near me…and…just possibly, was about me.

     "You knocked right into her!" said Male Voice #1.

I turned my head surreptitiously and saw, out of the corner of my eye, two men, quite near each other and, more important, me, glaring at each other.　 More disturbing, everyone else in the area was watching, some openly and some by "reading" their shoes, a la Me.　

　 "I told you, I didn’t touch your girl!" Male Voice #2 shouted.

The two men were now practically touching noses – not to mention the aforementioned toe box.

MALE VOICE #1: "I saw you! Apologize!"

MALE VOICE #2: "I TOLD you, I don’t got nuthin’ to DO with your girl!"

As I exited the train, I actually felt kind of good. Not because the only show of gallantry I’d ever experienced just made me feel violated, and certainly not because I had just gotten off seven stops early. I felt good because I finally appreciated how wise my friend had been. Being single still sucked. But it really could be worse.