Revelation

I was a slow typer. I decided to take a typing class. In three months I went from 12 words a minute to 73 w.p.m. I felt good to write as fast as my thoughts. Sometimes I would look down at my fingers and it looked like they were dancing.

There was someone in class who typed 132 w.p.m. I couldn’t figure out how she could type so fast. Finally I asked her. She said that her dad was Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith. He played fiddle with a Dixieland band called the Fruit Jar Drinkers. They were regular performers at the Grand Ole Opry. She used to watch him perform. She said he had lightning fast fingers. Sometimes they moved so fast they were a blur. She asked him how could play so swiftly. He said, “Sweetness, when I turn on the faucet, I let the water do its job.”

That night I went to iTunes and downloaded Fiddlin’ Smith’s song, “Beautiful Brown Eyes.” I played it while I typed. I got up to 75 wpm. I was frustrated. But then I heard a line in the song that said, “When I go to sleep at night, I dream of your beautiful brown eyes, those beautiful brown eyes, oh those beautiful brown eyes” and I started to cry. I couldn’t stop. I soaked the front of my shirt. I thought, “Oh, my God, this song is about me, I have brown eyes!”