Thanks. I actually found a way to get the letters and numbers I needed doing a copy and paste. You can't copy and paste from the screen it shows, but in the upper left where it says about recovery assistant, you can go there and copy and paste from any of the letters and numbers shown. It's not the full alphabet and numbers, but it had what I needed.
New problem now. My laptop has been down a few days because of the keys not working and I can't copy and paste to enter my password or the regular startup. I have to go into recovery assistant and that's where I can find the letters and numbers to copy and paste. The problem is that my laptop is showing that I'm not connected to the internet and it's asking me to enter a WEP to WEP2 code. I don't have the exact message in front of me. But I entered exactly what's on the modem where it says password. That's always worked before. It gives an error message. Right now, I don't even see it asking me to sign into the internet. It's asking for my apple id and password and it says there was an error connecting to the apple id server.