The Miracle of Muscle Memory

Summary

The author reflects on their journey from a would-be elementary-school teacher with typing challenges to becoming a proficient typist through muscle memory developed over a programming career.

Abstract

The article titled "The Miracle of Muscle Memory" recounts the author's personal experience with typing, starting from an unsuccessful attempt at a typing course due to physical discomfort, which led to an overreliance on correction fluid. Despite this initial setback and a career change from teaching to programming, the author eventually achieved typing proficiency. The piece humorously highlights the author's consistent typing errors, such as misspelling "alliteration" and "vacuum," and a personal connection to the surname "Greene," which persists in typos long after a divorce. The author marvels at the subconscious nature of muscle memory, which allows for efficient typing even as the conscious mind focuses on creative tasks.

Opinions

The author initially aspired to be a teacher but switched to programming due to a lack of teaching jobs and dissatisfaction with student teaching.
Sore-Pinky Syndrome, a result of the physical strain of typing on a manual typewriter with small hands, was a significant obstacle for the author in learning to type.
The author acknowledges the irony in becoming proficient at typing despite early difficulties and the unintentional consistency in their typing errors.
There is a sense of amusement and annoyance at the persistent typos, which the author attributes to muscle memory.
The author seems to have a positive view of muscle memory, appreciating its role in allowing them to type efficiently while focusing on creative writing.

… Without which this would have taken me 4 hours to type

In my past past life — duplication intentional: meaning, in the years prior to the commencement of my long-defunct career in high-tech — I’d aspired to be an elementary-school teacher.

In 1977, at the start of my ill-fated first term of graduate studies, I enrolled in a non-credit typing course. Word-processing was in its infancy, and my baby — little Miss Smith-Corona — was a manually operated clunker, as were the typewriters used in the class.

I lasted two weeks; Sore-Pinky Syndrome did me in. I have small hands and it hurt to make the stretctch. It hurt even more to apply the requisite force to the keys. I managed to eke out the c-o-u-r-s-e w-o-r-k for my Master’s in Education with the assistance of three six-packs of Wite-Out.

The effort proved doubly moot. There were no teaching jobs to be found. Regardless, after having been stuck student-teaching in junior-high hell, I forked off the road of higher education and pursued the path to higher pay.

And so it happened that for 23 years subsequent to my preemptive defection from teaching, I worked as a programmer. I continually used a keyboard for data entry of computer instructions, for which I generated documentation and designed user manuals. In the course of my career, I became proficient in typing, notwithstanding my handicap (make that pinky-cap).

I continue to be amazed that — as my brain handles the creative effort of conjuring characters and construing themes — my fingers go rat-a-tat-tapping, as they skip on and flip off the keyboard.

I find it both amusing and annoying that even my typos are unconsciously consistent. For instance — to my perpetual frustration whilst commenting on poetry — I nearly always mistype alliteration as alliertation (as I just did — I had to fix the first iteration).

My brain knows, and tells my fingers, that vacuum has one C followed by UU, but my fingers garble the message and type CCU. Jenny, one of my frequent readers, can attest to my mortification as to a story title. Proof-reading had failed to discern the error because my brain knew that it knows how to spell vaccum — -drat! — vacuum.

Twenty-five years post-divorce, I persist in mistyping greene, as I just did, with the superfluous E. Greene was my erstwhile surname. (The day after I tossed the dick, desiring a brighter shade, I assumed the name “Emerald.”)

Alas, yet again, I was obliged to correct above my oft-mistyped: “Emearld.”

Muscle Memory

the ability to reproduce a particular movement without conscious thought, acquired as a result of frequent repetition of that movement. “typing relies heavily on muscle memory” [emphasis added]