Push-pull, push-pull, push-pull. Around and around and around. My pencil flew over the paper, trying to comply with the teacher’s exhortations. Those were some of the penmanship drills that I performed in my fifth-grade Gaysport elementary class.

I wish it could be said that my handwriting was considered immaculate at the time and has remained so through the years. Dream on. Only doctors, the usual butt of handwriting jokes, have worse handwriting than me. My cursive handwriting suffered through junior and senior high schools.

My salvation came when my sister bequeathed her Royal portable typewriter to me. When I could select an elective course in high school my mother demanded I take typing. “But, Mom,” I protested, “only girls take typing.” She was not moved. “You have a typewriter, now learn how to use it,” she commanded.

That’s how I ended up in typing class in high school. I learned how to master the machine and have greatly benefitted ever since.

I still like getting a nicely formed handwritten letter. They are usually at Christmas and are from women. Ladies are so much neater and capable of attractive handwriting.

Keyboarding is now the dominant form of written communication.

A male friend, 83, writes in immaculate cursive script. He claims to have learned his handwriting skills in Catholic schools where the teacher-nuns would make their displeasure known if your curves and swirls did not meet their standards.

I am one of the older people who has benefitted from the transition from cursive handwriting to type. During my undergraduate college days I am quite certain that the ease with which my professors could read my typed course papers got extra credit consideration over the hard-to-deceipher handwritten products of my classmates. As a college professor myself, I greatly appreciated typed, rather than handwritten, assignments.

And I have gotten three jobs in my lifetime because of my ability to type.

For my first interview out of high school I met with Mirror publisher Ted Holtzinger hoping to land a place in the mailroom. “Can you type,” he asked? When I answered in the affirmative he mentioned an opening in the newsroom and I became an apprentice journalist, which opened doors for other jobs during my working lifetime.

When I reported to my first Navy duty station, I was interviewed by the personnel officer who would determine what job in the command I would fill. There were two openings — shore patrol officer (basically a uniformed police officer keeping good order and discipline) or overseas transportation officer (moving sailors and marines between ships and shore stations).

The transportation billet required some typing skills that I possessed, so that was the job I was given.

Thank goodness. My roommate got the shore patrol job and I didn’t envy the thankless disciplinary tasks (alcohol, drug and domestic abuse) he was sent off to investigate. I enjoyed the transportation assignment and would have been an unhappy, and unsuited, shore patrol officer.

Cove historian Jim Wentz writes a monthly column for the Mirror.