Grandmother, why do you write so quickly?

[pne]

This morning, I was addressing a letter for Stella, and Amy was watching me do so.

While I was writing, she asked me, "Why do you write so quickly?"

She got no response and then asked Stella, "Why is Daddy writing so quickly?". She responded, "Er kann das" (roughly, "He's able to do that, you know" -- not quite the same connotation as "Because he can").

She asked, "Whyyyyy?" (One of her favourite questions.)

So I tried to explain that when I was learning to hand-write in school, I also wrote slowly, but that I've practised a lot over the years, and I got better and faster, and now I'm able to write quickly. I'm not sure whether she understood.

I'm also really fast at typing, but I don't think she will have noticed that :) I'm apparently well-known for that in the company, though.

That, too, is just practice: my first exposure to computers was, I think, the Apple ][e (//e?) in 4th grade, and I've been typing since then. It's not ten-finger typing, but my fingers simply know where the keys are without having to look at them or think about it much. I just think about the letters (or words) I want to type, and they flow from my fingers.

I wonder whether switching to Dvorak would be beneficial, but I think that I can currently type so quickly that it would take a considerable length of time before the benefits (if indeed there are any) would outweight the length of time I'd need to regain my familiarity with the keyboard layout.

(Even such a minor thing as switching to a US keyboard layout would probably slow me down, since although I do a lot of typing in English, I'm used to using a German keyboard layout to do so, where Y and Z are in different positions.)

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

There have been a few times where I've been at a loss as to how to explain things...like, "Mommy, why is it cold?" My mind immediately goes scientific, which doesn't quite work for a 3 year old!

I know, right?

This evening, she was a little grumpy at having to go to bed and missing the Sandman on TV -- she was disappointed that the Sandman "had already gone to bed" since it was still light outside! (We switched to DST just this weekend.)

So Stella said that the days will be getting longer and longer and soon it will still be light even when Mummy and Daddy go to bed.

"Whyyyy?" Uh, where do you start? The earth's axis and the layout of the solar system? For now, "Because days get longer in spring and shorter in autumn, that's just what they do".

[leighbug]

Yeah, she hasn't asked that one. But she definitely does her sleep schedule by the dark. She goes to bed when it's dark outside. Which means when it's the summer, she goes to bed later.