Handwriting is a Lost Art

Today was one of those in-between days, weather-wise. It was warm enough, but the clouds kept covering the sun, the wind would pick up just a little and put some spring chill in the air, the day would look grey...it just couldn't decide what it wanted to be when it grew up.

At noon I was huddled in a blanket reading because it was actually cold in the house. I am so beyond ready for summer, even if that summer brings a move of several hundred miles and new faces to learn with a new job. Winter was a bit colder than normal, with several days of sub-zero weather, and this Spring has just been dragging on and on, struggling to crack 70 degrees more than two days in a row. It's like the earth is waiting for something, although I'm not sure what could top the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March.

I did work a bit on a knitting project that is close to completion because it is small and portable and ideal to work on while waiting for kids to be let free from torture school. I always find it funny when my kids whine about "how much homework they have". I look at their single-sided sheets and their one-page papers and pull the great-grandpa routine. "In MY day, I had to write hundred-page papers, hand-written, single space, both sides of the paper, with leaky ballpoint pens, on cheap filler paper! None of those fancy-shmancy computer printers for me! You kids have it easy!"

While I exaggerated (A small bit. The pens were very leaky, it was hand-written because we had no typewriter, and it was filler paper. Not a hundred pages though. More like ten.), I do think the kids have a lot less homework than I had at their ages. I can remember spending at least three hours a night on homework at age 11, and I'd have some from every category; Math, Science, Social Studies, English and a Foreign Language. And it wasn't any single-sided multiple choice refresher sheet either. It was answering questions with no less than a full paragraph of explanation that restated the question and provided the answer and how I arrived at that answer. You know, homework with research.

I was crazy and loved it. I loved moving my pen across the paper, reading about history or science, thinking about it, answering the questions with some thought as to why things were as they were. I loved hand writing, perfecting my loops, getting the word-spacing just so, the smell of the paper and ink.

It was during middle school and through high school that I wrote, longhand, several stories in the fantasy genre, in love with words and prose and character creation. I had stacks of notebooks and papers filled with writing, occupying extra space in my bedroom, stretching the seams of my backpack, occupying all my extra time in study hall or at lunch. My friends thought I was nuts. Why would I write over and above what I already had to do for homework? I don't know. I loved it.

Few of the stories were ever finished. I'd get bored with them, or the pen wouldn't write as smoothly as I liked, or I'd write the character into a corner that was awkward to try to get him or her out of. I'd read voraciously, and my stories never seemed to measure up to the stories already published. They think of so many things I don't think about. I can't be a writer as good as this. Thinking this at sixteen, seventeen, when I hadn't even been out into the world yet.

Which is probably why I decided to go to art school over pursuing writing. I had vivid pictures of the stories in my head that I wanted to see on paper, or canvas. I got B's or C's in my art classes. Fantasy art hadn't taken off much yet, it was all children's book art, which is lovely, but not what I wanted to do. I burned out at being told over and over to "try children's book art why don't you?"

I got an A+ in my English and Art History classes in art school though. Maybe it was my handwriting.