I am writing again--a second book.  I wish the publisher would finish editing the first one.  I intensely dislike waiting on anything.  Anything.  Red lights, the microwave to finish zapping, water on the stove to boil.  It is a huge waste of my time that I could be spending doing absolutely nothing at all.

I read an article this week that discussed spacing in what you type.  It said that if you put two spaces at the end of a sentence--after the period--that you were raised on a manual typewriter.  You automatically spaced twice.  A polite way of saying that you are ancient.

I started on a manual.  In the eleventh grade.  Sixty-five words a minute.  You had to hit the sling bar to start another line.  Then like magic, they invented electric typewriters with automatic return.  We all thought that was the final edition of typing.  Electric.  You even had correction tape.  Slide the tape under the hammer, hit the wrong letter again, and Ta-dah!  The wrong letter disappeared. What more could you want.

You could want a lap top computer.  That's what you could want.  With spell check.  And backup erasure, and whole line, whole paragraph, whole page erasure.  And a million other devices you never dreamed about.  I would like to say that we've gone as far as we can go.  But I know from experience that it is not true.  Somewhere, out there, a ten year old is dreaming up something new.  Something better.  Something that the rest of us can't imagine.

In my lifetime, everything is new.  I was taught to take care of the things I bought so that they would last.  This generation doesn't plan on anything lasting.  They discard stuff after a year, a month, a day, because something better has come along.  Because the thing they have is obsolete.  Like manual typewriters.  Throw it out.  It's sad to me, but I certainly don't want to go back to a manual.

Even phones have numbers for their next edition.  1, 2, 3...8...10 and so on.  I think mine is an 8.  I'm keeping it.  Unless it becomes obsolete.  Which I can't imagine happening.

But someone can.  And will.