Hte. Typo as title.

There it is again. My old friend.

And he had to correct it.

He hadn’t thought he might be affected until years ago in a newsroom when a reporter who had been trying to call back a phone number that he had recorded told him: I switched the order of the phone number you gave me to 4-3-5-6. You switched the 3 and the 4. Are you dyslexic?

He shrugged. Maybe. Hadn’t thought about it.

So he developed the habit of asking each person who gave him a phone number to repeat it. And it worked.

Then he looked at a message he was typing. “The” was “hte.” Red-lined because spell check didn’t like it. And “then” was “gthen,” but that was just fat fingered typing. As keyboards had gotten smaller when typewriters disappeared, he found his big fingers were very often hitting the wrong key or two keys at once.

He stared at that sentence. The intended “keys” had become “keats.” And not a Grecian urn in sight.

He had always known he was a lousy typist. Was scheduled for typing class in high school but it clashed with driver’s ed, and he needed that class in order to get a driver’s permit.

So, good-bye, Typing I, hello Miss Gully and her cramped Ford sedan, built for four passengers, carrying six, and all of us wondering when we were going to die at the hands of a sixteen-year-old rookie driver.

He looked at that sentence: “Miss Gully and her campted Ford sedad, buolt for four passageners, carting six and all of us wondering when we were goung to die.”

Twenty-four words, six errors, including a substitution of “carting” for carrying.

Some of that, he knew, was the confidence he had developed in forty years of hunting and pecking around a keyboard, a sort of odd muscle memory his fingers had found for typing familiar words.

But that wasn’t all of it.

He examined the sentence before that one: “Was scheduled for I high school…”

How did that happen? I saw the words in my head. “Was scheduled for typing class in high school…” So how did it become “Was scheduled for I high school…”?

I saw the words. They scrolled across that mental ticker-tape as I thought of them. And yes, them became gthem and I corrected it. I saw the words, but two of them got lost between my brain and my fingers. Where did they go?

*

We walk slowly, the old dog and I.

Our feet hurt.

At least mine do. Plantar Fasciitis. I’m testing various shoe inserts to lessen the discomfort.

The old dog is just old. His rear legs have grown weak. But sometimes when he stands, his rear legs cross and he falls sideways, and then when he is down, he flops around like a fish because he can’t push himself back to a standing position.

He is also going blind thanks to cataracts. He wanders into a corner and seemingly stares at the wall. Of course, I am looking at this from a human point of view. Who knows what a dog thinks?

The vet has him on pills that ease the joint pain, and his new “old dog” dog food seems to be helping.

Or maybe I’m just making all that up.

I just hope there is nothing like a brain tumor that is causing his walking issues because then really hard choices would need to be made.

I made them once. When my old lab reached the end. He couldn’t stand up, not to pee or shit or eat. The vet thought he had developed arthritis along his spine and the messages from his brain were not reaching his rear parts. He couldn’t even wag his tail. This big, goofy, friendly dog, could not wag his tail because, it seemed, he no longer knew he had one.

*

He stares at the sentence: “he flops aroin d like afish ebcaise he cant push himsewlf back to a standing position.”

I saw those words. Saw my fingers reaching for the letters on the keyboard, and yet it is an alphabetic mess. Saw those words on the page spelled correctly. At least I thought I did.

He had to add the word “for” in that previous sentence, between “reaching” and “the.”

I know I thought that word.

The letters keep falling away

Or unexpected ones appear

I knopw how to spell for… I know how to spell know, yet it appears as knopw

Where do the directions go?

Why don’t my fingers work?

The letters and words and thoihght rattle around, that’s thouights … no THOUGHTS, DAMN IT

They all rattle around in my head make them pour from my fingers

I want my tail to wag.

I want to

I know your face, but forget your name.

I’m afraid.

I want to know your face I want to but forget your name

I fdorgedt your face. FORGET. FORGET, damn it

I can’t. I won’t forget.

I know what it means.

It just won’t spell itself.

What do I do when all the thoughts are in my head and not in my fingers?

How does this happen

If

Hwen.