Have You Ever Typed Anything on a Public Typewriter?

Notes From a Public Typewriter is part memoir, part biography, but mostly a collection of notes that visitors to an Ann Arbor, MI bookstore have left on the public typewriter inside the store. I’ve seen public typewriters in the wild several times around where I live, and I often take a look to see what others have written, and sometimes even write something myself.

Following are some of my favorite quotes from the book. The quotes in the book cover a wide range of subjects and emotions, and you might find your own favorites. Each paragraph below is an individual passage on the typewriter. As you can see, some of them go together.

Where’s the power button?

Thank you for being here.

(attributed to Kurt Vonnegut) Write to please just one person.

Before we set out the typewriter, I had a vision that each person who typed a note would participate in a never-ending story, picking up where the last person left off. (In my experience, this doesn’t happen that often with public typewriters.)

Life, like this typewriter, has no backspace. Type strongly and don’t look back.

Watching my son try to type is like a crocodile trying to do ballet.

I’m scared I’ll spend half my life deciding what to do with it and the other half regretting that choice.

I love my mommy.

Your mommy loves you.

Why does this thing have a hashtag symbol. They didn’t have twitter.

#weird

If I had to write a five paragraph essay on this thing, I would withdraw from middle school.

Before spellcheck, there was spelling.

I think that this thing is broken. I tried to get on Facebook, but it’s not working.

There is something simultaneously thrilling and terrifying about a blank page. It’s full of possibilities, but with that is the overhanging threat of failure.

I wrote a letter to Santa today so that he doesn’t think we only talk to him when we want something.

I dislike people, misanthropes, irony, and ellipses…

…and lists too.

We are all stories in the end.

The book wraps up with some introspection by the store owner.

“Tonight, I leave it blank. Tomorrow, another customer-someone having a bad day, beginning a new life, about to propose, or wanting forgiveness will walk downstairs and, perhaps for the first time, press a finger to a typewriter key.”

“Snap. Click.. Clack.”

“Words will appear on that blank page. Words that cannot evaporate. Words that will stay. Words that will stick around and bring comfort, like the books on our shelves. That’s the thing about ink…in all its messy, smudgy, imperfect beauty. Ink lasts.”

A quick google search found this article about public typewriters. I’m sure that you’ll find many others to read if you want.