Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Turning pages, and getting back to the home position


Also, as a bonus paragraph, a few more linguistic quirks of aging. I know when typing I used to look down every time I returned my hands to the home position. I thought the little bumps on the "f" and "j" that help you determine this by feel were curiosities that I didn't feel the need for. Now, I can't imagine doing without them! It's hard to remember the sort of mental energy and focus that made looking down and back up so trivial


Another quirk has to do with page-turning. Naturally we've all had the problem of turning the page in a book but being unsure if you managed to get two pages instead of just one. Until recent years, I could easily resolve this by feel. But more and more lately, my solution to this problem is to look at the page number I am turning from and the page number that shows up after my tentative page flip. If it is one or two higher, I'm fine. If it is three or four, I'm not so fine. This would have seemed ridiculous to me before the age of 50, I believe. It's handiest when I am pretty sure I've only turned one page, since if it was two I have to separate them anyway.




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