It sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery, but it’s a memory from high school. The Back-to-School season has got me remembering my student years. And my dive into online Blogging has reverted me to study-mode anew. I’m finding some correlation.

Granite High School (gone but not forgotten) soaked up my major time and attention, when I was one of “the Fighting Farmers!” (Yep, Granite’s mascot was the Farmer.)

The school’s layout resembled a small college campus, with various buildings stationed on the 27-acre plot. Students crisscrossed the campus every hour, racing from one class to the next.

The three-story “L” Building” housed history classrooms, built above the basement swimming pool. The “A Building” held the auditorium, gym, and dance studio. The “I” building provided classes in industrial arts and auto mechanics. But the iconic “S Building” was the heart of Granite High.

“S” stood for science, presumably. But English, foreign language, and business classrooms lined those halls as well. Granite High’s trophy cases and “the Seal” graced the main foyer. (Any miscreant caught stepping on “the Seal” was pushed to hands-and-knees and given a toothbrush to scrub clean its hundreds of miniature mosaic tiles.)

Upstairs in the “S Building” ran a cramped corridor known as Sardine Hall. It’s south wall was lined with lockers, and the north held maybe a half-dozen business classrooms. The hallway itself was nowhere near as wide as Granite’s typical halls. Thus, the between-class traffic in Sardine Hall was . . . well, you get the picture.

I muscled my way every day to the far end of Sardine Hall for three years—first for type class, then two years for shorthand. (I got A’s.) After each class, I’d backtrack the hall, heading for my locker.

My last steps out of Sardine Hall led me past a couple of classrooms that I ignored every day. Computer classrooms.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

That was forty-plus years ago, when computers didn’t interest me any more than plumbing did. Computers didn’t impact my life in the least. I spent every day dutifully learning to write “Dear Sir,” and “I am” in shorthand. (I can still write those phrases. I’ve forgotten the rest.)

Today, I can speak “Dear Sir” into my COMPUTERIZED mobile phone, and it appears magically spelled out on the screen. I can text my “Dear Sir” to any point on the globe, in a matter of seconds.

My rusty skill of shorthand is a dinosaur. Computers run the planet.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

The Secret of Sardine Hall was the fledgling knowledge of computer science. I never dreamed that I strode past The Future every day before lunchtime. I never knew I’d regret it.

I regret it!

Now I’m a student of things computer. I feel determined to close the gap in my understanding. Even if I’m still miles from mastery of the computer power in my life, I like learning to learn it. I’m truly motivated, because I possess something now that I didn’t have two months ago—a Website!

It’s rather like owning a bronco. I approach it gingerly.

Still, my twenty-first century endeavor is to Blog, so I push along. Just because I’m baffled by stuff like plugins, widgets, dashboards, and Search Engine Optimization . . . that doesn’t mean I can’t still play. Does it?

Thank goodness this Farmer can type!

The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.  Proverbs 18:15