A room with a view

        Photo-sketched from a shot taken through the window of my computer room, the view seen here is the one I look out on as I type. While not usually viewed while I’m typing it certainly does distract me at times, and in a most pleasant way. 
     I touch type, and if I look down at the keyboard my fingers seem to go all over the place; I need to watch the page as the letters appear, otherwise I get into a lot of finger fumbling trouble. That applies if I’m writing a story, or an email; the same if I’m typing from text. The reason is simple: the draconian way in which I was taught. 
      I was fourteen when I sat down in front of my first typewriter at John Oliver High – sixty six years ago - having enrolled in a two year typing course which I soon learned was taught under the evil eye of Morgan La Fey! A witch of the first order, believe me.
     You see, my friend Calvin, and I were the only two fellows in her class of twenty-five or so girls. She frowned – horribly – at the mere thought that men should want to learn to type - caring not a whit that at the time a man, a male, a member of the opposite sex, was the world’s fastest typist. She was a card carrying feminist, using every chance she found to portray, and put into effect, her vision of the God given right of ‘Woman’ to be the Totem at the top of the Pole. Equality of sharing be damned.
     She loved to start each class by calling to the attention of the - mostly unimpressed - girls to the crass shortcomings inherent in the human male. We (males), she pointed out, were basically stupid, clumsy, and too inept for the finer pursuits (typing?), therefore incapable of using a typewriter. Apparently we were without finesse, our crude male fingers did not float over the keys, no, we ‘tortured’ the instrument with our graceless hands. Poor deluded woman! She had such a deep dislike of the “male animal” – as she was wont to call us – that any attempt to disprove the error of her implicit unwavering beliefs was met with total contempt. 
     Poor dear (!) Miss Whatever, her overriding contempt towards common human faults and weaknesses, particularly in men, bordered on some learned loathing. A form of misanthropy, born undoubtedly from an immense cruelty perpetrated upon her by some animalistic male: a member of her family; maybe even a once loved beau; or possibly a terrible  sexual experience forced upon her by a stranger. Well, whatever it was it certainly made a mess of her emotional life ( I hate to think of what it must have been like for those she was in contact with socially). It certainly was no easy picnic for me, and especially for Calvin, whose ability to charm almost everyone found himself treated with derision by our resident Nemesis: the goddess of  Divine retribution and revenge.  
    Unfortunately for her she was as much disliked by the girls she taught as by the two of us. Over the years her hatred and anger had developed into a misanthropic miasma which she spell-cast over all and sundry. The strangest of things was that her manner terrified her students into being excellent typists. We dared not be otherwise, for no matter how good you were if you were not excellent in your tests you could be sure of finding a “D “ next to ‘typing’ on your report card.
     The reason Calvin and I became students in her class I told of in my blog of April 9. We had, in all unknowing innocence, traded the dreaded Math Ogre for the  “Much of a Bitch of a Witch she Was! “
     Oh, how happily we strode across the school yard the day we changed courses, as we made our way to Commercial Studies School, sequestered away across a busy street. (Its positioning suggested quite strongly that it served a subservient position in the school's value system). How smugly we turned our backs on the red bricked walls of the ‘main school,' in which university hopefuls slaved away under the Math Ogre, and ‘wide eyed and bushy tailed,' walked blindly into the lion’s den – in this case the lionesses – and became fresh meat for her fierce hatred. Yes, unknowingly Calvin and I had made one fatal error, and for two long years paid for it. 
     Well, fatal may be too strong a word for our particular error, but to the ‘Witch of the Typewriter’ it was tantamount to having treated her with contempt. Our crime? We had missed her first class! For that we became her enemies forever, and even though forever in our case only lasted 2 years, it did seem as though an hour spent in her classes was equal to two or even three hours in another teacher’s class. She was relentless with us, we could do no right although we had done no wrong. It mattered not how hard we worked, or how proficient we became under her tutelage, we were hopeless dolts. 
     To carry on with this tale of woe would be as cruel as the ‘Witch La Fey’ herself, and I would not wish that on anyone, so I shall conclude with a delicious, may I say, utterly delicious little tale of a punishment for dear Morgan, and one that was so rightly deserved.  
     Near the end of our two year sentence in the ‘Witches Cauldron’ - we never found out as to whether she knew that was the epithet commonly used to describe her home room – students in the first class of the day, Calvin and I included, were seated before our typewriters, hands properly in our laps, waiting for ‘Her Witchness’ to arrive on the nine o’clock broom. Silence before she entered must be absolute or she would reign fire and brimstone down upon us, and proceed to ruin a perfectly good day. We tried, but we were young, and total unalloyed silence is anathema to youth, and so we erred. Someone, I have no idea who, began to giggle. Have just one person trying to hold back a snigger, or a snicker, or a chocking desire to laugh, and soon the entire room will erupt, and so it did, at the exact moment Miss Witch La Fey came through the door.
     Every eye found her at the same moment, and as if a musical conductor had signaled with his baton the laughter ceased. Pins dropping would have sounded like hail falling in the ensuing silence. Then from some cavern inside Miss Much of a Which came a hair curling cry that would have made a banshee cringe, and she was off.
     From the door to her desk she railed and wailed. All our various shortcomings were bounced from wall to wall. She opened her dictionary of nasty synonyms before us, and read them from beginning to end. She was so expressive we became less frightened and more intrigued by her prowess as a declaimer of obscure nasty phrases, and our fascination became even more intent as she moved behind her desk, placed both hands on the desk, leaned forward slightly, made a sudden backward movement as if to settle herself down on her chair, and disappeared. So intent on berating us she had failed to notice its absence.
     One moment she was ranting the next moment she was gone. The effect her amazing vanishing act had on the students can only be imagined. Pandemonium became the order of the day, not a single one of us could stop the laughter that took hold, and as tears poured down our faces we watched as from the vacant space behind the desk two hands slowly rose, slipped along the surface, and came to a stop. Shortly afterwards a face appeared, a look of stunned disbelief frozen upon it. It was as though we were watching a Buster Keaton enactment crossed with a Saturday matinee cartoon film. Classic slap-stick. But it was obvious Madam did not see her predicament as we did.
     Taking in the condition of the class - weeping from mirth, coughing from repressed laughter, concern, and wonder - the distraught, confused woman who had a moment before been a raging virago - our Nemesis – was now, herself, ready to burst into tears; though certainly for a much different reason than our own.
     Chivalry, a virtue denied existence by our ‘damsel’ in distress , reared its ugly head as Calvin and I rushed to to the aid of our downed teacher. The idea of having to touch her, possibly even grasp her while we rendered assistance did not sit easily with either of us, but it sat even less easily with the Bitch of a Which, who flailed out at us with one arm as she struggled with other to push herself up. I would like to say she was simply distraught but that would be too kind, no, she was simply horrified that a man – especially a young man – should lay a hand upon her, even to help her get to her feet. She had used some great language earlier to berate us for our outburst as she came into the room, but I cannot in all conscience put down the short phrase she used upon the two of us as she fought to escape our help. Suffice it to say that it stopped us in our quest and quieted the room as naught else ever had. 
     Blazing a murderous look at each and everyone of us she pulled her skirt back to below her knees, straightened her blouse - which had twisted around her back - patted her marcelled hair back into position, and strode from the room in the manner of a general, slapping her right hand along her leg as though she were wielding a riding whip.
     The episode is verifiable history to all who witnessed it and folklore for those who were told of it from second or third hand. As for Morgan La Fey, she absented herself from the school for some days, returning only to preside - no more than that - over the few remaining classes of the school year. Though nothing was said, no retribution instigated against the class for something we had not done – although I imagine she thought otherwise – there was a further coldness in her approach to our particular class, aimed  directly at Calvin, and me. It would have been a prank either of us could have instigated, and one I would have perpetrated had I been dared, but in this singular incident we had no hand.
    If I remember correctly, Miss Whatever left the school sometime in the middle of my last year there, and went I know not where. Yet, she is certainly not forgotten. Sad to think, her memory has been kept alive all these years not as a person respected, but of one feared when she stood, therefore not pitied when she fell. What a terrible legacy. Ah, well, she certainly gave us a good laugh, and lest we forget, a delicious memory.