I’ve just noticed that my keyboard is dirty. How’s that for a spectacular intro to a blog post?  Well, it isn’t (a spectacular intro, I mean. It is definitely a dirty keyboard — this wasn’t meant to be an existentialist post).  Anyway, as I was saying…my keyboard is dirty, which is nothing new.  What is new is the odd pattern.

I use one of these.  It’s a nice size for my hands, and the individual key mountings mean that it tends not to collect crumbs (a big problem with other keyboards I’ve owned). But what I noticed today is that there are two keys on the board that are visibly filthy… the P and the ‘ (I mean the single quote mark…the key one to the right of the semicolon). On the surface of each key is a perfectly round clean white space surrounded by a ring of brown…I believe the technical term is “gunk”.  This disturbs me.

I’m a touch typist, so my hands normally rest in the “ready” position (index fingers centered on F and J) and I type from there. So you’d expect the ASDF/JKL: keys to be dirtiest, wouldn’t you? OK, I’m mildly mollified by the fact that the dirty keys have a perfectly round clean space on them; that points to me having impeccable touch typing technique, striking those keys in the same place every time.

But the pattern is a bit sinister. Well maybe not sinister, since it is happening on my right hand. Dexterous? Perhaps, as regards my typing technique. Semantics aside, I can’t believe I type P’s and quote marks more than S’s, T’s, E’s, N’s, and L’s, so why don’t those keys also show schmutzing?

Since it’s unlikely that aliens or mice are using my keyboard when I’m not around and typing messages in a language that consists only of P’s and quote marks, I’m left to conclude that there is something wrong with my right pinkie finger.  Do I have some deep psychological conflict involving my right pinkie? Am I consistently leaving it dirtier than the rest of me when bathing, for which it resentfully slams out filthy P’s and quotes, the only vengeance that lies within its paltry reach from “P” to “?” ?

Or is it just time for me to clean my keyboard?