Quiet Aunt Zelda

I remember way back in elementary school, probably second grade or so... down in the basement, beside the library was a lab of really old [though I guess not so much at the time] Unisys/ICON computers. You know, the ones with the big trackball on the corner of the keyboard, and the 'Action' button for clicking. Our class would go down there once or twice a week to play the educational 'games', like Robots R&D, and that one where you were a fur trader canoeing across Canada. Or something.

Then one day, at the end of the period, they brought in a TV, and told us to find a program on the list called 'ALMENA' and start it up. They then guided us through this video while we typed on our keyboards:

Quiet Aunt Zelda.
Willy Sits eXams.
Every Dad Cares.

And so on. I remember all the lines to this day, because over the next few months they were burned into our minds. Why? They were trying to teach us typing--Just take a look at the bolded letters. They were supposed to be 'easy' phrases for us to remember the layout of the QWERTY keyboard, in columns, starting with the Q, and moving across to P.

A few years later in the fourth grade, we got these things called 'Type Writes'. They were a basically a small plastic computer-typewriter, with a small screen maybe 30 characters long. They came with a book of exercises that you could punch into the machine, and then you'd type the text of the exercise as quickly and accurately as you could, and it would measure how you did.

Anyway, how did you learn to type? Did you have similar programs in your schools? Or did you learn by sitting at the computer all the time, and just catching on? Are you still typing with two fingers, or do you use the 'home row'? Discuss.

Jam it back in, in the dark.