Feeling you on this one, @amy154 is right that some areas have always done this though lol.

Honestly I used to think those little wood dowel tricks were overkill but that's actually pretty smart.

Wait, has anyone considered that the seagull might have actually been trying to help? Like maybe it knew you were gonna write something cheesy about time travel and steered you toward something way funnier. A prompt about a time-traveling typewriter that keeps getting stolen by seagulls across different eras actually sounds better than whatever you had before. Plus now you've got a villain for your story that's way more memorable than some dusty machine. That bird basically wrote your next big idea for you, you just gotta look past the poop.

Carl had it right. My back is way happier with the knee kicker too.

Old wives tales like that are more about luck than real skill.