The Home Team: "The world's worst typist"

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting outside the office of the editor of this newspaper. "I'll be with you in a second," she said. "Just let me finish this e-mail."

I watched her work -- and I was mesmerized. I had never seen anybody type that fast. Her fingers literally flew over the keyboard.

When she finished, I asked her how fast she typed, in terms of words per minute. She said she didn't have a clue.

Knowing that she had a competitive streak (she played college soccer), I wasn't surprised to get an e-mail note from her that evening: "I took an online typing test -- twice -- and averaged 93 wpm on the two tests. I have no idea if that's fast or slow."

No idea, my you-know-what! It's blazing fast, and I'm sure she knew it.

The only other person I know who can move his fingers that quickly on a keyboard is my youngest son. When I see him texting, I get dizzy. I'm not into texting myself, but back in the Dark Ages when we used to I.M. each other, he'd write, "What time is practice tonight, and where?" By the time I'd input, "7 p.m., at ..." I'd be interrupted by another message from him: "Never mind -- already found out from Jake."

The reason I'm so amazed at how fast my son types, as well as the above-mentioned editor -- and my wife, for that matter -- is that I happen to be the world's worst typist. I sometimes think about the required typing class we had to take with Mr. Kelly back in ninth grade. I struggled to eke out a "C." If I remember correctly, 80 words per minute was considered amazing; 60 was very good; 40 was acceptable. I don't think I ever broke 35. When my son comes up to my study and sees me on my computer, he laughs. "You really stink at typing," he says. It's true that I freeze even worse than usual when people watch me, but even under ideal conditions, I'm pretty bad.

All this got me wondering about what goes into making a good typist. Being the logical, concrete thinker I am, I did a comprehensive study -- forwarding the online typing test already taken by the Westport News editor to my wife, my youngest son, my middle son, my oldest son, my oldest son's girlfriend, and my best friend from high school. (He also took typing with Mr. Kelly. Needless to say, he did better than I did.)

From this broad cross-section of the American public -- not to mention the huge sample size -- I developed a number of conclusions:

"¢ Females are faster typists than males. I know, I know -- amazing. The women in my sample had an average net speed (gross speed minus errors) of 79; the men crawled in at 60.

"¢ The texting-generation typists (under 30), who for the most part use a funky hybrid of old-school touch-typing together with Blackberry-style hunt-and-peck, averaged 68 wpm. The "boomers" (over 50) had an average of 65. No significant difference there.

"¢ The righties absolutely creamed the lefties, 72 to 52. This could perhaps be explained by the fact that the only lefties in the sample were my son Greg, who took his test in Las Vegas after having an undisclosed number of drinks, and yours truly.

I, as it happens, put off taking the test for as long as possible. To be honest, after tallying all the other scores -- some of them quite impressive -- and taking into account my high school track record, I was kind of daunted. On my first try, I made five errors within 10 seconds; I aborted that attempt, chalking it up as "practice." Eventually I completed two tests. Though I didn't do as horribly as I expected, I still came in dead last among those who took the test sober.

Which maybe explains why it's been taking me so long to write the Great American Novel.

Westporter Hank Herman shares his Home Team column every other Friday in the Westport News.