Magic Typewriter

It was a typically troublesome day at work. Grumpy clients, uncooperative employees, late vendors, and typical tech problems, all just making me wonder, “Is it worth it?” I finally got it all sorted out, tidied up my desk and my desktop, the physical and the digital, and headed for the door. I never looked forward to my commute home, knowing that it was always at least 45 minutes of anxiety, stopping, starting, asking Siri if there was a faster route. Finally pulled into my driveway, parked, headed toward the front door, noticed that the light was on in the typically dark dining room just to the left of the entry. As I opened the door, I was struck by this vaguely familiar clickety-clack sound coming from the dining room. I pushed the door open and saw my sweet, beautiful wife, Anita, typing on my old, antique type-writer. “What the heck are you doing,” I asked. I was stunned to see her typing.

“Just working on my to-do list. I’m almost done, wait a minute.”

She punched in a few more letters, hit the return handle, pulled the paper out, folded it in half, jumped out of her chair, “OK, I’m ready, let’s go.”

It was our typical Friday routine. We headed out to our favorite pizza place to pick up our traditional pepperoni dinner. As we backed out of the driveway, I had to ask, “So, what in the world got you typing . . . instead of using your laptop or your tablet?”

“Remember when my Mom moved in with us, when we lived in Chicago?  She was writing a to-do list on scrap paper, on the backs of receipts, on used envelopes.  At that time, the typewriter was set up in the spare bedroom, and I knew she knew how to type, so I suggested she use it. She jumped at the idea and started using it every day, remember?”

“I do remember, now that you mention it. So that’s why you drug it out and set it up, just because your Mom liked it?”

“No, don’t you remember? She used to rave about it, saying it was like magic. She would type something on her list and then the next day it was done. She swore that half or more of her to-do stuff just got done all by itself—and she credited the magic typewriter,” she laughed.

“And, you believed her? You do remember that she had some short-term memory issues---could that have explained the “magic”?”

“Of course!  But, there were a couple of things that didn’t make sense. Like one day she put on her list that she wanted to call her former neighbor---Mrs. Brian, she hadn’t talked to in 20 years—but then early the next morning Mrs. Brian called her. I know, it could’ve just been coincidence, but what are the odds? Anyway, I was going through that stack of boxes in the garage, stumbled on the typewriter, so brought it in—and here’s what happened,” she handed him a piece of paper. “It’s my “to-do” list from the other day.”

He lifted it to eye level and read the first line, “Win the lottery!” He stared at her for a second, “So, you’re thinking that $200 scratch-off winner you had the other day came from typing this in on the “magic typewriter”?”

We enjoyed our pizza and dessert with sporadic conversation about the magic typewriter. I had a hard time believing the “magic” thing, but was willing to listen.

“Does it hurt that I might, kinda, sorta believe it might be true?” Still with a big smile on her face, “Why don’t we try again, just to see? Not something too outrageous, but something imaginative? What do you think?”

A great idea jumped into my head, “Not to say I believe this, but you know we were just talking to our daughter about coming home for Spring Break and she didn’t seem too interested. How about we type that on your list, not mine, I think we need to keep it yours. Let’s type it on there, maybe put something about an email? And, then wait and see what happens.” I wasn’t that enthusiastic about the whole thing but would really like to see our daughter next month.

My wife turned, put another piece of paper in the typewriter, typed in, “Get an email that Melissa’s coming home for Spring Break!” She pulled the page out and quickly walked into the kitchen and tacked the page to the corkboard on the wall, “That’s what I did with the “Lottery” page.”

We agreed to avoid email until mid-morning the next day. Melissa never returned emails late in the day nor very early in the mornings, so we figured the earliest we would hear anything would be mid-morning the next day. 

My clock went off, as usual, at 6:00 am, I headed downstairs, turned on the coffee pot, took the mugs down out of the cabinet, got the flavored creamer out of the refrigerator, headed back upstairs to wake my wife. She was already awake, slowly got out of bed, slipped into her slippers, and followed me back down. We sat in the den, had a couple of sips of coffee, a quick breakfast.  An hour later, I turned on my laptop, waited for it to boot up, “Are you ready to check emails?”

“I guess, it’s probably too early but what the heck.”

I logged into my email, and there it was, a message from our daughter, titled, “Good News!”

The text was, “Great news, I’m coming home for Spring Break, and even BETTER news, I got a free ticket from my friend Mike who works for the Airline. I’ll call later to go over the details, LOVE YOU guys!!”

I was paralyzed, then shivering, then breathless, much because my beloved daughter was coming home soon, but more because, suddenly, I realized we have this magic typewriter. What would we do next?

My wife and I took a minute to catch our breaths, then she asked just what I was thinking, “So, what are we gonna do next?  You want to make a list, by hand or on the computer before we type it up?”

“Yes, we’ll make a list . . . but we got to give this some thought. I don’t want us to be too greedy, we need to be careful of limits there may be. Maybe we can help others, maybe someone we care about with a terrible illness or something like that.”

“Good thinking, I already have some ideas,” and she was now smiling again.

We made a list, ten things. Then we decided to type them up two at a time, then wait to see the results. It turned out by the end of that week, we got nearly all of our wishes. We both knew there were many other wishes we could type up, but agreed to wait a few more days. Melissa was coming home the next day, so we spent our evening planning for the visit, where we would go out to eat, where else we might go to shop or just hang out, and then we agreed, we will give her the typewriter. It wasn’t even something we had to discuss. I could sense it from the moment I discovered Anita typing—her short list, under “Win the Lottery” was just the one word, “Melissa.” Nothing specific. I didn’t need details but apparently the typewriter did, so we’d give that to Melissa and let her handle that. She had many more wishes than I did and they were more . . . important, I guess would be the right word. She was just about two years into her brave transition to her correct gender and I couldn’t be there to protect her from the ignorance, hatred, and ill will she might face. Maybe the magic typewriter could do it for me, I prayed.