Chicken-Scratch 101

The one thing that separates us from all the other species – really bad penmanship.                                                                                                                                                   Paraphrased from “NCIS”


While I was at the laundry late last week, I got this great idea for an essay for my blog.  I got it all written in the time it took for my clothes to dry, but it may be a while before anyone sees it.  Yes, there were scratch-thrus and scribbles, changes of mind and word.  But, the real issue was that I found I couldn’t read it several days later.  Inspired as I was, I wrote so fast and furiously, it became illegible in spots, especially toward the end.  I always used to say that if I could read a doctor’s scrawl, I could read anyone’s.  I’ve now been proven wrong and by my own accursed cursive words.

I can blame it on arthritis, which I have, and that after about 5-10 minutes of writing, my hand starts to ache to the point where I write faster, and messier, just to get it over with.  Perhaps I can even blame it on too much time keyboarding my words instead of taking the time to neatly write what I have to say pen to paper, the muscles used to write perhaps weakened by disuse.  Regardless of the reason, I still have two pages of relatively well thought out topic that practically need a forensic specialist to decipher.  Either that or an expert in hieroglyphics.

They say that the practice of handwriting anything is becoming an archaic activity, a lost art being replaced by e-mails and texting in computer-generated fonts.  Yet, it’s still being taught to our youngest students by parents and teachers alike.  Apparently, someone other than myself sees that there are times when this old-fashioned method of communication still has its place in our modern world and there are still going to be times when it’s necessary or simply preferred.

But, it still needs to be readable.