Being Brought To You By the Letter "A"

I have always prided myself on my ability to type.  Typing  85 cwpm is pretty good, and I have done that with no problems.  That is 85 correct words per minute for those who never had the pleasure of taking a typing class.  Typing class was always my favorite class.  My favorite birthday present was my first Underwood Portable typewriter.  I learned how to clean the keys, change the ribbon, use carbon paper correctly...I loved my little typewriter.  Of course, now it is called Keyboarding rather than typing.  I remember the first keyboard to my first computer.  I used it so much that I wore the letters off the keys. Mac was going to do a bit of maintenance on my computer and he noticed that where once letters had been on most of the keys (q, z, and u were still mostly there) there were only smudges.  He asked me how I knew which letters were which.   I explained that after we had learned the home row keys in Mrs. Campbell's typing class we had to cover the keys with little caps that totally hid the letters.  It was so that you could look at the work you intended to type without looking at the keys on the typewriter.  I don't know if the piano lessons I had taken since 4th grade had helped, but I suspect it did.  You could not read music and look at the keys of the piano at the same time, so it was the same theory.  My fingers still fly over the keyboard these days, despite arthritis, and I still wear the paint off the keyboard.  Mac, who uses the old standby "hunt and peck" two finger method, doesn't quite understand it. 

The other day as I was typing my article, the letter A came completely off the board. I couldn't believe it at first, it hit me right in the middle of a paragraph that something was wrong...I happened to look down to where once there was a small square piece of plastic with the remains of the letter A,  to see a little white nub staring back at me.    It only took me a few minutes to find the errant piece of plastic and I worked for over an hour trying to get it to stay on point.  No luck.  I thought about glue but was afraid that I would ruin the function, so decided against it.  So here I sit, typing yet another article wondering how often  the letter A could become a problem?  Looking over this piece of work I see that the Letter A could become a thorn in my side if not a pain in my little finger, left hand.