In a dark corner of my office there is a small box. It’s bright and colorful, but otherwise utterly unremarkable. It emanates a strange odor, reminiscent of the musky, moldy basements where it had been kept over the past twenty years, before my Mom had thought of giving it to me.
In it, there is a pile of yellowing, crumbling paper that smells even older. Pages and pages of text that my 12-year-old self wrote on an old typewriter. Short stories, lyrics, school projects; deep thoughts only a teenager could think. I spent days, weeks, months, pressing down the mechanical keys of that typewriter, seeing letters magically appearing behind the ribbon, words manifesting on page after page, the loud clacking of the keys and the ethereal ping reminding me that I had reached the end of the line.
Ping.
[139 words]
(c) Anett Enzmann 2019
five stray minutes 
Deft description “and the ethereal ping reminding me that I had reached the end of the line.” That sent shivers down my spine. I had forgotten about the ping. Thanks for bringing it back.
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So had I. When I started writing this I was actually going for something completely different, but somehow this memory surfaced and eventually took over the text.
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I love this, and it also reminds me of when I still used a typewriter. And, I also still have two boxes at home with old notes and letters, written by hand or with a typewriter. Remember the white liquid used to correct spelling errors?
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(Been rather busy, so sorry for the late reply!)
I certainly do remember those! I was so clumsy with them that I’d rather avoid using them at all, so I wouldn’t have it spill all kinds of places. It smelled, too!
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