Someone moved my keys! (Quelqu'un a déplacé mes touches!)

In order for my dear readers to understand this vignette, we need to go back to Cleveland, OH and the summer of 1963.  My late mother suggested that I take a typing class because, as she put it, "Girls who know how to type will be able to make something of themselves." (Sigh!)  She signed me up -- against my will, I might add -- for a course at the local secretarial school.


There were no electric typewriters back then, just clunky machines that were not especially user-friendly.  We had a Royal (HH model) at home, a portable typewriter that came in a square box with a hinged top.  It was heavy as could be, but it was a pretty nifty machine for its time because it also had "touch control" and was a little easier to deal with than the school's typewriters.  (I actually took that typewriter to college and made some money typing term papers.)


Anyway, we were dealing then -- as we are now -- with a QWERTY keyboard, and I really excelled in typing class.  By the time of the final exam, I was typing about 125 words per minute with virtually no errors.  (I've maintained that speed, but when you think about today's keyboards, it's really not such a grand accomplishment.)


As the years flew by, I was exposed to any number of "cutting-edge" technologies -- the IBM Selectric, the IBM MagCard -- precursor to the IBM dedicated word processor -- and the IBM word processor itself.  And then, all of a sudden, there were the Commodore -- I had the Pet model -- the early Macintosh, and a variety of IBMs, Dells, and HPs.  I think I tried them all!


So, imagine that I had been typing away for 36 years at 125 WPM on a QWERTY keyboard before landing in Paris only to find that someone moved my keys (quelqu'un a déplacé mes touches)!  Hélas!!!


Instead of my beloved QWERTY keyboard (clavier), the keys on my French computer (les touches de mon ordinateur français) were not where they were supposed to be.  All of my favorites were in other locations!  Help! (Au secours!)


QWERTY was now AZERTY.  (The Q was now the A; the W was now the Z.)  The M was somewhere over in East Jabib.  Even the punctuation marks (les signes de ponctuation) had been déplacés.  I figured I would just have to learn the new system and live with it ...


... which I did, but only after several fits and starts.  I went from being a very good -- 125 words per minute -- typist (un très bon -- 125 mots par minute -- claviste) to typing about 25 words per minute (vingt-cinq mots par minute).  Slowly but surely, I was able to increase my speed (ma vitesse), and by the time I left Paris, I was back up to about 100 WPM (cent MPM). 


When I returned to the US and wanted to write in French, however, I realized that I would need to remember where all those errant keys were.  (Fortunately, I have a good memory, et mon ordinateur américain lets me go back and forth (faire des allées et venues) entre mon clavier d'anglais et mon clavier virtuel français.


Nothing is simple, is it?  Rien n'est simple, n'est-çe pas?