Illegible but sincere
My elementary school report cards were all the same: good grades in reading and arithmetic and spelling and a lesser grade in writing.
In the ’60s, “writing” didn’t mean what I do for a living now, but “handwriting” – starting with printing and then moving on to cursive. I still can hear my third-grade teacher Mrs. Clark leading us through the drills.
“Round, round, ready, write,” she would say, and I would flatten my forearm to the desk and, with awkward sweeping motions, make the letter C.
A classroom was such an intimate space back then that we all were aware of which students made the best letter Cs (always a girl and usually one with the long curls and the pretty dresses). I, being the opposite of that, never did get my Cs right, nor my Rs or the very tricky Ks.
Elementary schools stopped teaching cursive writing in the early 2000s, a bow to texting and computer-based learning. Although some states are bringing cursive back to the classroom, there’s a whole generation that struggles to fill out a check or read a letter from their grandmother.
This came to mind lately as I’ve been writing thank-you notes. As I usually do after production of a documentary I’ve produced, I follow up with notes to the people who participated. For this, I keep boxes of thank-you cards around. I know it’s a dying social habit – writing paper cards and sending them by snail mail – but it seems more personal than an email or a text.
But good lord, my handwriting. As my school grades would suggest, it never was pretty or even good, but it used to be legible. By college, I learned to write quickly and could decipher my own notes. Ditto my first years as a reporter, when I was taking notes every day; I’d developed my own kind of shorthand that looked like secret code, or a doctor’s prescription.
But then computers came along, and instead of gripping a pencil I was resting my palms on a keyboard. Days and weeks would go by without my needing to write much of anything.
And then one day you find yourself at the grocery store with a list you scribbled on the back of a piece of junk mail. What is that word in parentheses next to chicken? Is that yogurt? Yellow? What the heck kind of chicken was I planning to cook?
So of course, the thank-you notes have been a mess. I started and then tore up three cards because the handwriting was so out of control, spreading out at the beginning of sentences only to scrunch up and crowd up the edges at the end. These people deserve better than this.
My first television job was at an Ohio station whose general manager was married to an amateur handwriting analyst. She explained how she can tell if someone is sane and hardworking or lazy and dishonest. Maybe the boss asked her to take a look at my signature on some employment documents – or more likely not (I was hired, after all). I can only imagine what she’d think of me if she were to see my signature now.
Maybe I’m in a hurry when I write, or maybe my grip is not that strong. I think it’s the result of neglect. I can type this sentence at a rate of 70 words per minute, but ask me to write a simple note of thanks?
When you open the card and stare at the scribbled sentiments, please know that I meant well.