Decades after typing on my first PC keyboards, I finally have that same keyboard experience on this Keychron V6 full size mechanical keyboard (with numeric pad, of course). The sheer exhilaration of everything rushing back at once, going back to 1981/82 when I got on an old TRS-80 my dad had picked up from someone, followed by my own Commodore 64 as a Christmas gift, then an IBM PCjr, and eventually my own PC clone when I headed off to the University of Texas in 1988, is not describable with words.
Firing off a text to my dad and best friend/brother-in-law was the first actual intentional typing of full words and sentences, sharing something I had just read about the Texas football coach staying at Texas instead of returning to Bama (which was no surprise – why would anyone ever voluntarily leave Austin as the head of the Longhorn football program?). The experience was magnificent. The feel, the SOUND, the hand position, all perfect. Perfect in a way that I knew could never truly be realized, even though all of my reading about mechanical keyboards over the years forced me to perpetually dream that impossible dream.
Then, just as suddenly, a voice from somewhere in the immediate vicinity spoke. “What is THAT? Oh, no, we are not doing that. Are you serious?” My beautiful, loving wife, the back of whose monitor you see in the image at the top of this post, is not a fan of the sound. Within roughly 30 seconds of pulling the unexpectedly heavy (making it all the more satisfying) keyboard out of its styrofoam-cushioned box and plugging it into the USB-C port on the iPad Pro 12.9 M1 where it was automatically and instantly recognized and enabled, I experienced the full reaction gamut of mechanical keyboard aficionados everywhere: “YES! I have FOUND the thing that has been been missing from my life, and all is now complete!” coupled with an immediate and severe rejection of the soothing clickety-clack on offer from the Brown switches housed within.
For now, I type on, as Sandy works silently across from me. Or is she? Where is her proof? She cannot be seen, other than a disembodied hand on the mouse. There is no noise emanating from her keyboard as her ghostly hands occasionally glide across her keyboard while she mutters something quietly to herself (why would she do that, other than for auditory reinforcement of her own apparently self-doubted existence?) Whereas I have that glorious audible evidence of not only my physical presence, but also the very work that is being produced. Something’s gotta give, and I fear I know what that will inevitably be. Thoughts and prayers are welcome, for me and my Keychron.
Somewhere In the Middle 