Years ago when I was still in high school (and long before personal computers were de riguer), my parents stressed to me the importance of taking a keyboarding class. Naturally, as a writer I had a fair amount of experience but it wasn’t “textbook” keyboarding. Mom was a career secretary and so of course she told me how crucial it was to learn how to type. And then my father piped in about it.He explained that even he took a typing class as a senior in high school and that it was one of the best things he ever learned. He also told me that he was one of two guys in the whole class. It then became clear to me why he really wanted to learn how to type. Typing to him was a prelude to dating.
In all seriousness, Dad knew it was a good idea to learn proper keyboarding.
The lesson I learned from this: For every important lesson you learn – whether it’s keyboarding or whatever- there’s always another underlying lesson. For dad, it was the key to dating – for me and everybody else it could be dating (my class was equally male/female) or anything else. Perhaps it’s just the journey, maybe you make a new friend along the way, and maybe you pick up another skill in addition to the one you’re there for. It’s good to be open to all possibilities. I think that’s what my dad did.
