Me and Meredity

Back in the 1980s, a doctor in the office for which I was transcriptionist gave birth to a daughter she named Meredith.  I'm not sure why I had to type that word so many times ... we probably had lots of patients named Meredith.  

I cannot for the LIFE of me, even today, type the name Meredith without first typing Meredity.  I heard from the publicist for a Sacramento theater today and I went to respond to her message.  "Thanks, Meredity" I typed. Thirty years I've been typing that name and still can't type it correctly the first time.

As I grow older, my typing gets worse and worse.  I still type fast, but spend almost as much time correcting typos as I do actually typing texts.  There was a time when I was tested as typing 135 words per minute with only one error.  Now if I type 135 words, chances are that there will be errors in half of them, or more.

There are three types of typos that I make consistently, two I understand, the other I don't.  There are the usual actual typos where you type the wrong letters.  For many, many years, the ring finger and pinky finger of my right hand had become numb.  Any word that I typed that had an O or a P in it had to be corrected because 9 times out of 10 the fingers didn't hit those keys.

I had a very painful nerve conduction study done in 2009 (I described it as a 30 minute electrocution!) which identified the problem as a pinched nerve and the only options offered to me were an experimental surgery which might not work (the doctor was not optimistic), putting a splint on my arm to hold it straight for several months (not acceptable for a typist!), or hope that the problem would eventually resolve itself.  I chose the latter option.

I learned how to deal with it and miraculously at some point last year, after nearly 8 years, I realized that the numbness was leaving my ring finger.  A year later, it's almost normal again and the numbness is starting to leave my pinky finger too.  It may or may not return to what was "normal" but it's 1000% better than it has been for many years. It no longer explains most of my typos.

The other typos I make concern words that run together.  I look up at what I have typed and may find that three or four words are all typed as one word.  I couldn't figure out why that could possibly be until I was using my laptop and realized that I didn't make that mistake on that machine.  I decided that the problem started when I got my new computer and figure that if I get a new keyboard with better defined keys, I might type more accurately...or at least not run my words together any more. I may eventually get around to keyboard shopping.

I think the problem with this keyboard is that the keys
are not tall enough, if that makes sense

But it's the third type of typo that worries me, for which I have no explanation, and which I think of as one of the signs of approaching dementia (but then I think that anything unusual with my brain is a sign of approaching dementia).

For example, I was recently captioning a photo and was typing the word "famous" and when I looked at it, what I had typed was "family."  That's sorta kinda logical to explain, getting the first part of the word typed and my brain filling in the rest (kind of like that annoying auto fill that your cell phone does!)

But the ones that really worry me are the times when I am thinking of a word and when I look, I have typed a completely different word that has no relation to the word I was thinking of.  Or I mean to type the name Richard and instead type the word Robert.  That's a bit of a stretch, even for auto-fill!

It is clear I will never be a professional typist again.

Typo-ville

OK.  I'm going to do something weird here.  Except for this introduction, I am not going to correct any typos in this entry.  The reason is that something is happening to me and I can't seem to stop it.  For one thing there is this numb 1-1/2 fingers on my right hand.  I've mentioned that before.   The doctor sent me for a nerve conduction study and that doctor concluded that I probably have a pinched nerve in my elbow and that short of some sort of exploratory surgery which may or may not cure the problem, there wasn't anything she could do for me, other than having me wear a splint for 6 months or so and hope that might fix it.  I decided it's something I can live with, so I didn't pursue it.   But it has made typing letters that need to be typed with my right hand iffy.   Most words that use the letter "p" or "o" end up with those letters missing and I go back and replace them.

But in addition to that, my brain seems to be misfiring.  It types words that I didn't mean to type...sometimes changing the ending of a word from, for example --ing to --tion, in the simplest form.  Sometimes typing an entirely different word.  I wish I could come up with an example.  You can hardly say I need more practice typing!  Good lord, I have been a fast, accurate typist since high school and I type literally all day long.  

The new glitch is that every 3 or 4 words, when I hit the space bar, it doesn't space.  I don't know why.  It's not the keyboard, which seems to be working fine.  And my fingers seem to be typing "fat," meaning that when I want to type one letter, sometimes I type two.  All these things combined together made up one reason why I was reluctant to transcribe all those Lamplighters interviews that I glibly offered to transcribe 2 years ago.

So what I want to do is to type and entry (see...I wanted to write "type an entry" and I typed "I want to typing and entry") making only minimal corrections...sometimes I make a correction before I realize I've done it....or I may edit because I wanted to stay something in a different way. It won't be an entry about anything important, so if you can't stand reading an uncorrected entry, know that I won't be upset if you give up.

Got all that?  Ok, let me tell you about our going to see Henry V last night.

* * *

I wasn't really hapy about going to see Henry V.  As you all know, I am not a Shakespeare lover, I have never seen Henry V and when I tried to read it at the bookstore early this week, I was falling asleep before I had finished the third page. But I did a Googlesearch on Henry V and found what amounts to cliff notes, a nice study guide which, combined with Wikipedia wouldgive e enough material that I could at least remwember which characters were which and get a sense of the plot if I happened to nod off during the performance.

TheDavis Shapespeare Ensemble performs at the UCD Arboretum, a really nice little place that they usually block off with tarps to make n enclosed theater.  We got there a little early and I was surprised to see that there were very few cars.  Maybe I wasn't the only one who wasn't excited about seeing Henry V.  

As we walked u to the lace twhere they usually perform, Iasw that the tarps werent there and tehre ddn't seem to be a ticket table either.  But the first time we saw a show at thisplae, they held it on the large expanse ofgrass, where they had more room for a stage.  With the grandeur of Henry V Ifigured that that must be what they haddone and was sorry that I hadn't brought a chair to sit in--I do NOTsit well on the grass.

But we got to the grass and there was no activity there either.   Thank gof forsmart phones.  Isat down and looked up the company and the show and r ealized that the reason we couldn't find them was that the show wasNT that night but was June 14.

So I have a reprieve.  I told Walt several tiems that I realize I am a dummy (and he heartily agreed, ointing to me that hehadsaid earlier that he thought we were seeing the show in June).  

But the nice thing about this reprieve is that Iremembered Kenneth Brannaugh had done aversion of Henry V and nw I am going to order that from Netflix an watch the damn movie before I review it next month.  By then I should know more about it.

At least I know a lot more now than I ever knew beforeabout the Battle of Agincourt, about which I have heard much in my various trips to British museums and watching of period pieces about Britain on TV.

* * *

OK.  That's the sample.  This isn't as bad as it can get some times, but is pretty representative of what I am dealing with.  I am just so frustrated because I was always the tip-top typist, best in my class, the one that everyone marveled at watching me work after I got out into the work world.

Now sometimes I may have to correct a word or group of words three or four times before I get it right.  I can only assume this is something age related.   I'm certainly not going to give up typing but since whatever this is seems to be getting worse, not better, I also suspect that I am going to continue to be frustrated by my inability to type the way I have for most of my life.