Dear LPG. 

By the time we reach retirement, many of us think that we have lived very ordinary lives, but that just cannot be true. The details elude us until the subject comes up in conversation, but there are so many things and skills we have learned that we now just take for granted. Perhaps we think that so many others have also learned them, so they don’t count, but they do.

Like many ladies of my advanced years, I spent a lot of my working life in offices. When we went looking for an office job back in the day, one of the skills that was sought by prospective employers was the ability to produce a reasonable letter yield from a typewriter. 

 How many girls who are now my age can remember being taught to touch type back in the day? One of my most lasting memories was sitting in a school classroom where the noise of some 30 pupils clicking typewriter keys was deafening. However, the upside was that the teacher’s nagging when she saw you getting it all wrong never seemed as loud as in other classes.  The other thing I remember was the frustration because I was not very good at it back then.

When I found myself in an office, all that I learned came together, but then came computers where there was less typing, and more mouse control involved.  So many more people had to know what to do with a keyboard in the 1980s, and by the end of the century, nearly everything you did required you, or someone scrutinising every step of your progress, to record some aspect of your work electronically.

It was then that I felt that my typing knowledge paid off because, with all the other new things I needed to learn, the keys were in the same place.  I also suspect I was not the only person who found themselves bashing at the keys and missing all the clicking sounds long after there was no need to press that hard.  

I still use a computer keyboard, but ironically, now that there is no need to rush, I find myself doing a much better job than I ever did when working.

I also find it interesting to see a couple of the younger male members of my family, who purport to be computer technicians, typing relatively quickly but using all the wrong fingers and still needing to look at the keys.

Typing is often blamed for repetitive strain injuries and some arthritis-related ailments by many older fingers that have spent time negotiating the keys, although knitting and piano playing are also part of that problem.  

For all that, I can see a new problem arising for future pensioners.  The mobile phone is the electronic communication device of the moment.  Whenever they have a spare moment, nearly every youngster seems to have their mobile phones out, and the speed their thumbs reach while texting makes it hard to keep up.    

I recently learned that there is a name for it; I bet you did not know that people can be diagnosed with De Quervain's tenosynovitis.  I have to admit that I only know because I looked it up. This is becoming a problem for more youngsters than you might think. 

So, the future oldies of the Western world will likely have yet another possible finger affliction to deal with, but only their thumbs will be at risk this time.  

CD, New Cross

CD found some information about a possible future ailment for our fingers…

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