Volume 3, Issue 90: Kamera

"I'm counting on a heart I know by heart to walk me through this war."

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I finished among the top of my high school graduating class, I was a member of the National Honors Society, I aced most of my classes—I was a smart kid. But I have to tell you: Today, I remember almost nothing of what I learned. I know I took three years of biology in high school, but the only memory I have of any of it is one of my classmates eating the leg of a frog he was dissecting on a dare from his lab partner. (He had to go have his stomach pumped because of the formaldehyde, speaking of smart kids.) I got an A in every trigonometry class I ever took, but it you put an equation in front of me right now and asked me to solve it, you’d get a blank look and a small dribble of drool out of the left side of my mouth. And if I’m being entirely honest, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t correctly place more than maybe … 10? 15 if I’m lucky? countries correctly on this map:

I do not consider this a failure of the American school system: It’s a failure of me. I did learn all of these things when I was in school; the teachers taught them to me like they were supposed to. I just, consciously or unconsciously, have expelled them from my mind. The human brain only has so much capacity, and “where Chad is on a world map” has been replaced by far more useful information, like “the starting lineup for the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals,” “the most efficient search engine phrasing to bring up the funniest videos of skateboarders crashing their groin into things” and “my children’s names [first and middle].” I try to keep up a brave face when I tell the boys in this house to do their homework, insisting it’s of the utmost importance, while knowing that most of this education is going to be flushed at the first opportunity. We may all be like this, regardless of our personal intelligence. If I suddenly just dropped a sixth-grade general knowledge test on you, with no warning and no preparation, are you sure you would pass it? Seventh grade? Ninth grade? Sure, we gain all sorts of knowledge as adults, from “how to pretend to be listening to another parent at a play date” to “how to subtly undermine people on Instagram and still retain plausible deniability” to “how to slowly but unmistakably compromise all the dreams, values and ethos you once believed made up the core of who you are as a person (and how to convince yourself it’s fine, really, it’s fine),” but those aren’t the sort of questions that come up on tests. The vast, vast majority of classroom information I learned as a child and a teenager is gone forever.

But one class—one class—that I took in high school taught me skills that I still use today, all day, every day. It is the one class, had I not taken it, that I’d be dumber, slower, worse off without today. It was the definition of what a class should do: It gave me knowledge that I would rely upon the rest of my life.

My sophomore year of high school: I took Typing.

I remember my father frowning on my decision to take Typing, which was an elective I chose over, like, woodworking, or metallurgy, or whatever Learn A Trade! classes Mattoon High School was offering at the time. (Those classes seem equally useful, all told—probably more so.) I was a bit skeptical of the class myself, because, like all people who don’t know how to type, I believed the hunt-and-peck method I had developed was faster anyway.

It wasn’t. And it isn’t. The keyboard is designed the way it is to maximize your speed once your fingers know where to go. If you are one of those people who believe like I used to, that your hunt-and-pecking is faster, you are wrong.

There is not a second of the day when I do not use that class. That class was so formative, so ingrained into my brain, that to this day, the thing we learned the one day I missed class for a doctor’s appointment—doing the shift-and-reach to type numbers—is the most common typing mistake I make. That class borrowed so deep into my brain that you could conceivably say my life has never been the same since I took it. It is the most formative class I have ever taken. It is the only one that stuck.

Obviously, I write a lot, so sure, I use this class all the time. But I think it’s more than that. For me, writing has always been a way to attempt to instill some sort of order in a highly disordered world; writing is my attempt, often in vain, to provide narrative sense and shape to events that otherwise would feel random, even chaotic. I write as a way to filter the planet. I talk too fast, I think too fast, I’m all over the place by nature; writing slows it all down, gives me a chance to catch my breath.

Typing is the physical manifestation of this process: It is the machine that connects the brain with the page. I type incredibly fast—I just did a typing test before this paragraph and ended up at 84 words per minute—but that rate is still slower than my brain works. This allows typing to be the conduit, my fingers translating what my brain is doing before I even have a chance to realize what I’m trying to say. Every time I sit down to write, I’m seeing the words for the first time: I’m always a little surprised to see what the subconscious has come up with. (It’s why, when on those rare occasions that I come up with a good joke, I actively laugh out loud myself: The joke’s as new to me at that point as it is to you when you read it.) Roger Ebert had a great line about the muse visiting during the act of creation rather than before, which is another way of saying, “Stop waiting to be inspired: Just sit down and get to work.” This is how my process works too. I just get to my desk and see what I come up with.

And that is entirely because I can type. It’s entirely unconscious. I don’t realize I’ve typed an “S” until I’ve already typed it. Typing is so hard-wired into my personality, into my very humanity at this point, that I’ve actually caught myself, when having a conversation out in public, typing out the words I’m saying in my head. I also sometimes mentally do the math of how many letters are typed with the left hand rather than the right. I’m also a little obsessed with words and even sentences that are typed with only one hand. Did you know that the longest word in the english language typed with only one hand is “stewardesses?” And how about this sentence, fellow typists? Extra vegetated terraces were reseeded afterwards as we recreated a devastated desert. Did it just get hot in here?

I cannot tell you how to determine the circumference of a cylinder. I cannot diagram a sentence. I cannot tell you the capital of Tanzania. But I can type these words before I realize I have thought them. I cannot fathom how any class could possibly be more valuable than teaching me to do that. I don’t know how my life would have been different had I not taken that typing class. I knew it at the time, even at the age of 15, that I was absorbing something that fit perfectly with my personality, something that felt natural, almost like it was made specifically for me. It didn’t feel like I was learning a skill. It was much more like learning a new language, and become so fluent in it that it becomes the one you prefer to speak. Maybe this is what school, and education, and really just being open to the world and all the possibilities it can hold, is supposed to be: To find that thing you love, that passion, that key that unlocks a whole new universe you had no idea existed. Some people discover it as a child; some people find it in college; some people spend their whole life looking for it. I found it at the age of 15, in Mrs. Castle’s in Room 204, at 2 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It’s never where you’re looking for it. But you know when you’ve found it.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. The USMNT and the Fall of Hipster Patriotism, The Atlantic. The troubles with nationalistic fandom, ironic and otherwise, in the age of Trump. Also: USA! USA! USA!

2. Aaron Rodgers Fooled Us All, New York. Fair to say, Aaron Rodgers lost some money this week.

3. Tom Hanks Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with Finch.

4. Five Random Memories From Election Day 2016, Medium. Always fun to go back and remember that day.

5. How Much Longer Will Kids Be Wearing Masks in School? Medium. Fair question, I think?

6. Five Lists for This Friday, Medium. I don’t know if this series will be any more popular than the last one, but it’s fun (and quick!) to do nonetheless.

PODCASTS

The Long Game With LZ and Leitch, discussing Aaron Rodgers, ESPN’s journalistic erosion and the waning popularity of college basketball.

Grierson & Leitch, discussing “Eternals,” “Spencer” and “Finch.”

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we recapped the Missouri game and previewed the Tennessee game.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“2021-22 Illinois Men’s Basketball Preview,” Illiniboard. I don’t know how many people in the world are willing to read 25,326 words on the Illinois basketball team, but there should be zero doubt that I am one of them.

GREAT MOVIE THAT’S NOT AVAILABLE ON STREAMING

Jungle Fever, directed by Spike Lee. There is a depressingly high number of Spike Lee movies unavailable to stream, and this may be the best one. It’s still good, but the thing that has ultimately lasted the longest has to be Samuel L. Jackson’s performance, which predates his work in Pulp Fiction by three years but still surpasses it.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

Not only are all letters out, but at last all bookplates have been sent. If yours doesn’t arrive in the next fortnight, please let me know.

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,” Hiss Golden Messenger. I always admire a band that makes a shit-ton of music. Just keep making stuff! It’s tough to pick one specific Hiss Golden Messenger song, but this is the one I keep coming back to.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Kids. First. Shots. Done.

About freaking time.

Oh, also, this was a freaking blast last night:

No better time to subscribe to Grant Wahl’s and Jon Arnold’s newsletters than right now, folks.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will