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ONE DAY LAST YEAR, my portable manual typewriter unexpectedly suffered a snapped neck, leaving the carriage return unusable. I went into a period of mourning. I placed the crippled machine - a loyal friend for some 20 years - in a respectable grave in the far room of the attic, covering it with its vinyl dust cloth.

But in the months that followed, I found myself missing its presence dearly. Feeling somewhat disloyal, I drove to an office supply depot and purchased a used manual to replace it. The machine sat on the car seat next to me on the way home, and at a stoplight I lifted the lid of its case and I gazed at its chrome and plastic parts. It gleamed beneath the street light. At that moment, it occurred to me that there are many very personal reasons why I'm compelled to own a manual typewriter.

I type on a manual because I care about my health. It's not just dainty pressing of keys we're talking about, and none of these pansy wrist pads are involved. We're talking real, blood-circulating, bone-strengthening snapping on the machine. We're talking about the sweep and thump of the carriage after each line, the musical bing of the bell. We're talking exercise not just for the fingers and hands, but for the heart and mind. Simply put, I type to stay physically fit and to maintain an active lifestyle.

I use typewriters because I like their names. Don't throw your high-tech terminology at me. Microsoft (something very small, and very cushy?), Multiscan 1705, SyQuest, Zip drives, Ram Doubler 2000, or Trinitron 300ES (a bad '70s sci-fi movie?). Give me the old names, those regal, elegant names that are fun to pronounce: Smith-Corona Classic, the Remington, the Penncrest Caravelle, Royal De Luxe.

Manual typewriters have another advantage: You can sit under a tree with the lightweight machine resting on your lap, slide the blue sky into your carriage, and write on it. Sure, you can do this with a laptop computer - but you still have to plug those in now and then. I'm sick of being hooked up to wires and being connected to the life support cords of the electronic world. Electricity is not cheap, and just think of those noisy, polluting generators that grind into the night. So, in my own humble way, I type for clear water and clean air. I type to preserve the environment. Your beautiful day is brought to you by Underwood.

I type because there is White Out, and CorrecType, and MagiWhite. These marvels of the modern age enable you to use the same sheet of paper and type over your mistakes. With our carelessly greedy computer printers, we simply reprint entire pages over and over again, even if it's just a one-letter typo. Think of the saplings we've sacrificed. And when the pines of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin are gone, what of the hardwood forests on the slopes of the Rockies? How would you feel if you filled the tray of your Laserjet 500 with paper imprinted with this ghostly watermark in the center: "Made of 100% California Redwood." I type to save the forests.

I type because a great philosopher once said: "I type; therefore, I am."

Allow me to hit the backspace key for a moment. In the not-too-distant past, I suffered through a high school typing class with Miss Racafratz, the cranky typing teacher with no eyebrows who slapped the tender undersides of our wrists with a wooden stick. One day, in waltzed a substitute typing teacher named Ms. Chanel, who wore a red dress, was surrounded by a cloud of perfume, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. All the boys went dreamy-eyed and their usual 25 words-a-minute pace dropped to 15.

Soon the word spread that those who made the most mistakes on a test would get individual help. By the end of that week, when the timing bell rang and the tumultuous clatter of those 30 manual machines finally ebbed into silence, it was amazing how many of the guys' scores went down. Some of my best friends actually came up with negative figures.

So today I type in honor of those fallen heroes of the 12th grade, those boys who never made it to technical school because their typing scores dropped to nothing for a noble cause that wore a red dress. Today, I type at 21 words per minute because I cannot forget.

I type because a typewriter, unlike a computer, never loses its memory. MM

Bill Meissner, a fiction writer and poet, is director of creative writing at St. Cloud State University. He has been known to use a computer, but can often be found typing on one of his eight manual typewriters.