Handwriting

Although I don't consider my handwriting anything special, other people apparently do. I'm often complimented on my neat and 'fancy' script. Recently one counter clerk who took my check stood there looking at it and tell me she just liked 'looking at it'.

It all started back in grade school, I guess, when I learned to form the cursive letters. Miss Bird, I remember, told me that I had good formation, but she said I could improve my handwriting if I slanted all the letters in the same direction. She told me to practice, practice and practice and she thought I'd have lovely handwriting. I took her advice. I guess it paid off, as in high school I was invited to hand write the menus for an upscale restaurant (The Hedges Inn) and was paid for doing so.

After my children were born, I had to sit quietly while breast-feeding one or another of them. I used that time to practice calligraphy or write letters to friends. The more practice you have, the better you get, and that works for anything you sent your mind to, I imagine.

I've been known to let things get sloppy when I'm in a hurry, but I don't like to do that. I enjoy knowing that my script looks nothing like a doctor's perscription. People have remarked that their own handwriting is terrible, and that they can't do anything to change it. I don't believe that is true. Today, a clerk who took my check, told me that she hardly writes with a pen anymore...she texts.

It seems to me that we've gotten lazy in the age of computers. We don't write letters by hand any more, we email. I hadn't thought about the texting idea in regard to handwriting until the clerk mentioned it. Isn't it sad? I think so...and yet, it's not surprising. We are all so busy, so anxious to have everything done immediately, it makes perfect sense.

The future tumbles toward us furiously. We no longer do figures in our heads, or with scribbled numbers on paper or count on our fingers. Adding machines do it for us. I can only hope that someone will remember how to write with their hand, as we 'progress' with all these machines.

Before long, I fear that Robots will be doing our thinking for us. What will be left for us other than to turn into huge vegetables which will be able to speak words to a machine, and have it written? I don't want to see that.

I think I'll go write a letter....with a pen.