Dictation? Use it as an author’s tool? Last week, I found two treasures I wrote many years ago: a story and a poem. Dictation helped me quickly type up both. This is how dictation has changed over the years.
Dictation Using Changes
In 2002, I chaired the National Singles Square Dance Festival here in Albuquerque, New Mexico and had to type up over 600 registrants’ names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. I bought DragonSpeak, a dictation program, hoping so save my hands. The program had to learn your voice, so you had to practice a lot. It just didn’t live up to its promises, so I put it aside and hand-typed all that data.
Then in 2018-2019, I faced typing up 258,000 words transcribed from interviews with Marshall Flippo for his biography, and a tech friend suggested dictation using Microsoft Word, but I couldn’t make it work. So again, I typed it all up.
Since then, I have used the dictation tool on Google Docs, but last week, I returned to Microsoft Word and found its dictation tool to be greatly improved. The story below is 738 words, and I dictated it in about five minutes. The poem I found is 779 words and again, using the dictation tool, I finished it again in the same amount of time.
Grandma’s Yellow Bowl
It’s a large yellow bowl – a mixing bowl – yellow on the outside; white on the inside. Glass. Big enough to make bread in it!
My grandmother’s been dead for five years (1988). I’ve had it in my kitchen since my aunt and mom sorted her belongings. Breakable glass – yet never broken. Memories live inside this container, this antique.
Grandma was a simple woman, went to the fourth grade and stopped. The family needed her to help pick cotton; school was extravagant! But what a cook she was!
Her cooking style was simple – fresh – no recipe, just a sense in her touch, the texture, the smell, etc. The bowl she owned, probably many years. Why didn’t it break? What stories could it tell?
Transfixed I stared at the bowl on display at the flea market in Albuquerque, New Mexico.. The warm New Mexico Sun beat down on my head, yet I didn’t realize it. That’s just like grandma’s bowl – her favorite yellow bowl, and only $.50.
“Just big enough for bread, Child!” She told me every time she took it out of the cupboard. With pride, she had sat it on the counter, touched the edge with her fingers delicately and smiled.
“Lots of good meals in this bowl!“
All this came crashing down on me as I stared at the bowl at the flea market.
“Honey, honey, let’s go – or did you want that bowl? You’ve been staring at it for two minutes. What’s wrong?“ My husband asked as he tugged at my elbow.
“No – no – I have one at home. Just like it.“ I said slowly coming out of my fog.
“I’ve never seen it,” he answered.
“I know. I put it away to save it. It was Grandma’s favorite,” I say grabbing his arm and feeling a tremor go through me.
The rest of the day of shopping, I thought of nothing else but that bowl. For some reason, I was anxious to get home and find it – hold it – touch it!
When we pulled up into our driveway, I jumped out of the car before it stopped and sprinted to the door. My husband hollered something to me, asking if I was sick. Fumbling for my keys, I dropped them in the grass by the door. Searching for a second, I picked them up, found the door key and throw open the door.
Tossing my fanny pack on the couch, I ran through the kitchen, where our answering machine blinked off and on, signaling a message. Who cares right now! I bolted down the ten steps to the basement, knowing exactly where it was, where to look. The dusty box sat on the shelf I had put it on several years ago. I had put it away so I wouldn’t break it. Carefully, I picked it up and carried it upstairs to the kitchen table.
The box wasn’t too heavy, yet its possessions were some of my treasures. No, they weren’t worth much – you see the bowl was for sale at the flea market for $.50, yet it’s value to me was priceess.
I grabbed a butcher knife and snapped the masking tape off the top. Crumbled newspaper bounced out of the box like popcorn. Carefully, I waded through my treasures – a serving crock bowl and lid from my great grandmother, and then my bowl – my yellow bowl.
My husband joined me in the kitchen with a puzzled look on his face. I showed him the bowl and he still seemed confused.
“Larada, what’s this about? What’s so important about this bowl?”
“I made a promise to grandma before she died many years ago to myself to what this bowl stood for – cooking for my husband and family – and making sure that the meals I prepared in it would be prepared with love.“
Tears ran down my cheeks. Our marriage had been slowly deteriorating. My career had taken me out of the house more frequently, and my husband had received my frustration in the form of angry words, snide remarks, and an undercurrent, taunt with stress and intention.
As I looked at grandma’s bowl and held it close to my heart, I heard her words again, and realized that a lot of the recent problems in our marriage had been mine, not ours.
“How about a homemade pie for dinner?“ I said to my husband as I wiped the tears for my cheeks, knowing somehow that bowl had changed me drastically that day.
Only worth $.50 – who cares? To me it’s worth a million!
Finally, today’s dictation tools excite me so much because I have lots of poems I’ve written but not typed up yet. I see this time-saving device as a lifesaver for sure.
Have you ever used the dictation tool in Microsoft Word? If so, how did it work?
PS – Ever since then, that yellow bowl has had a prominent place in my kitchen, and I use it regularly.
~ Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir available in audiobook format at the following places:
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