Scratching the Itch

Today my 14-year old was bemoaning the fact that he doesn't have a laptop. We're on vacation and he wants to write. He spends at least part of nearly every day calculating how he can earn enough money and exactly how long it will take him to earn enough for a laptop.

I understand completely. I was 14 when I had my first job--working as a counselor in a summer day camp program. I earned $100 for the summer--minimum wage was one dollar an hour. At the end of the summer I bought myself a typewriter for $75. I spent the next several years typing away at that little typewriter. I wrote my first novel, my first play, short stories, and poems. My mother said that after I went away to college she sometimes thought she heard the click-clack of my typewriter at night.

It's hard to go too long without the feel of the keys beneath my fingertips. I know some writers still use long-hand, but my penmanship was never that great. I loved typewriting from the moment I tried it. There is something very relaxing about the process.

I wish I could buy a laptop for my son, but we have other children and I can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on one of them--except for something like college tuition, which is a different matter. Besides, I think he'll appreciate it more after he's earned it, just as I earned my first typewriter.

And he'll have to endure the itch until we return home.