The typing baby.

My cousin Lauren needed help.

“You have a typewriter, right?” she asked, slightly panicky.

“Two of them,” I said.  “In two different rooms.  Why?”

“Are they wide carriage?  My friend has a typewriter but it wouldn’t work for what I need.”

I didn’t know.  I promised to call Ermanno at Star Office first thing in the morning.

“Wide carriage,” I reported.  Now I was intrigued.

“I have stock certificates that need to be typed,” she explained.  We made a plan for her to bring baby Vivienne over, and I’d play with her darling 5-month-old while Lauren worked.  Another week went by before we coordinated times, and just as we had decided on a time in the late afternoon —  we were interrupted by the baby’s nap time, heavy rush hour traffic on Olympic Boulevard, her early bedtime and both of our general exhaustion.

“Tell you what,” I proposed.  “This whole idea of rushing around at rush hour doesn’t make sense.  I’ll come to YOU tonight at 8– and I’ll type them back here.”

Lauren was ecstatic.  I went over, brought home the project, cranked out the paperwork, and got it back to her in 24 hours.  I felt a little like Bernie Madoff on his secret floor, typing numbers I had no idea about on paper that wasn’t in a computer system.  It was the first time I’ve typed stock certificates and I had to be super-careful.

When Lauren came to collect the stuff, I showed her my typewriter(s) and she typed a few sentences.

“This would have taken me forever,” she admitted with a smile.  I was happy to help.  It’s not often someone gets excited over my having a machine.  And it was the least I could do — and she got to spend more time with her beautiful baby instead of sweating over a foreign object named “Olympia”.  (She also gave me a wonderful “Thank You” card BEFORE I even began, which I thought was super-sweet.)