The Keyboard I Didn’t Know I Missed

The story of why I bought a mechanical keyboard

The other day we took the kids to Playdium. Before they could play, we had to fill out some consent forms on their computers. They had these old-fashioned, clicky mechanical keyboards.

Aaniya started typing on one and said, “This is really nice to type on.”

And something about that stayed with me.

I’ve been wanting to write more, but I’ve been using Apple’s little Magic Keyboard. It’s perfectly functional, but my fingers almost feel like they’re sliding across it. I started wondering whether having a keyboard that actually felt good to type on might make me want to sit down and write more.

Then I realized there was probably another reason that feeling appealed to me.

When I was in fourth grade, my dad was away in the UK. I had recently learned about the Commodore 64 and desperately wanted one. I asked Dad to bring me one, and he told me that if I got good grades in my exams, he would.

While I waited, I used to practice typing on his old manual mechanical typewriter — no electricity, just keys connected to metal typebars that physically struck an ink ribbon against the paper. You had to really press the keys. If you typed too quickly, the typebars would sometimes collide and jam together.

But in my imagination, I wasn’t typing on that old typewriter.

I was practicing for my computer.

Then the exam results came.

I came second.

And Dad kept his promise. I got my Commodore 64.

I loved that machine to bits. And looking back, I think part of what I miss about those old computers isn’t the 8-bit graphics or the limitations. I certainly don’t want to go back to 64 KB of RAM. 😂 I miss the physical experience of using a computer — sitting down deliberately, pressing substantial keys, typing something, and feeling the machine respond.

Nearly forty years later, my daughter pressed a few clicky keys at Playdium and said, “This is really nice to type on.”

And apparently that was enough to wake up the fourth-grader who used to sit at his father’s typewriter dreaming about a Commodore 64.

So I bought myself a mechanical keyboard.

At least that’s my story.

The less romantic explanation is:

clicky keyboard felt yummy, so I spent $ 😂