My handwriting is horrible. No, it’s worse than that. Illegible would be a compliment. I don’t know whether it is my heredity or environment. It seems like the creative part of my brain works about 10 times as fast as the part that controls my writing hand. I start to write something and it turns from capital to lowercase to a series of wiggly lines. That’s heredity. My mother’s poor penmanship was legendary, she excused it by calling it library-backhand as if that made it special, it was mostly illegible.
My other problem is environmental. I enjoy the creativity of writing, but absolutely detest the physical act of making letters on paper. My third grade the teacher traumatized the entire class, but me especially. On the first day she assigned more homework than could possibly be completed. I was up ‘til eleven, then up again at 5AM, but could not finish. All the parents complained and she reduced the assignments to about four hours a night, I was seven. Asking to use the pencil sharpener was treated like a high crime or misdemeanor and subjected the requester to suspicion and intense scrutiny. Her stare could not have been more penetrating over a shotgun. That made me so nervous I accidentally broke my pencil, frequently. The result was that I wrote many assignments holding a broken off pencil lead point between my thumb and forefinger. My papers were always marked down one grade for lack of neatness.
Fifth grade wasn’t much better. We were taught the Palmer method of cursive handwriting, as most of our generation was. My school district was so backward, they insisted that we learn handwriting with inkwells and steel pens, not much different from the quill pens of John Hancock’s day, or Shakespeare’s. Pencils and ballpoints were forbidden.
I gave up on penmanship and printed, actually lettered, instead, until I was criticized for writing in ALL CAPS. Maybe that is why I had so much trouble with punctuation. I switched to two sizes of caps as in WEST HAWAII TODAY to avoid learning lower-case letters too. I developed a writing style with very long sentences to minimize the number of letters I would have to produce. My school district did not teach boys typing (except one week) so I did not learn that essential skill. Only the invention of the word processor, with spell and grammar check, made writing something I could really do on my own. I have learned more about punctuation from grammar check than school. In today’s education atmosphere, I would probably be considered handicapped.
Drafting, or in those days, Mechanical Drawing, was my best subject. I would solve the hours assignment in ten minutes, then help the rest of the class figure it out and understand how. I never got a better grade than a B though, because my lettering was poor. I finally circumvented that problem in college with a lettering template. Conversely, I’m not bad at sign making, but then each letter on a sign becomes a separate project.
I did exceptionally well on standardized multiple-choice tests, where handwriting didn’t matter. Therefore, the school kept telling my parents that I was capable of better work, which would have been true if writing was not such chore. I also lacked enthusiasm; grades did not matter. I might have read three chapters ahead in the textbook, but not do the homework. No one ever mentored me about my penmanship except to comment that I should become a doctor. As far as I know that was not a prerequisite, or qualification.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com