Bits And Pieces

Penmanship

     Next Christmas I doubt if I'll write any notes on my greetings, or send any cards from our vacation spot with written messages of my activities.  Until they invent a typewriter portable enough to carry around in a purse I'm going to give up penning the word.

     No this is not a new thing to come upon me like a flash.  I'm not suddenly afflicted with a shakey hand, it's just that no one can read my handwriting.

     Grandma says she can, but it's mother love that carries her through.  Pop has a time figuring out the penned endearments on the greeting cards I send him and the kids claim they never know where I am even though I leave a message as to my whereabouts.  Recipes I copy as friends dictate will remain a mystery and I defy any sales clerk to find anyone else who could possibly forge my signature on a charge slip.  I even have a hard time figuring out the little messages I pen to myself.

     Take the calendar.  I get the kind that has large blank spaces for each day so when somebody calls and asks "can you?" I can or can't by glancing at the filled-in dates.  But here lies the problem.  I know because the calendared day is penciled in that I'm busy, or someone is busy doing something; but it takes a bit of study to figure out that "hr dr fr pr" means hair dresser for permanent, or that "br cl mts bg mg fr Th" means bridge club meets bring magazine for Thelma.

     I'm an abbreviation addict probably because over the years I've become a bit sensitive to the handwriting critics and so by using shorthand I write less, but more confusing because I use my own method.

     Pop never has this trouble as all his appointments and evening meetings are all written out boldly even if they run out of that square where they belong.  "Meeting at eight o'clock in village hall" means just that and it is penned clear and legible for all to see.  But if I have something to do that same day I have to use my shorthand system to get my message to myself in the left over edges of the square marking that day.

     I'm forever writing myself little messages on bits of paper which I carry around in my billfold and wonder what they mean.  Messages like: "P.p.p at cl." means pick Pop's pants at cleaners, and "lg bt of ctsp" had me stumped when I eyed my shopping list at the supermarket.  It wasn't until I reached for catsup for hamburgers for supper that it dawned on me that I should have gotten a large bottle of catsup.

     Would that I had a lovely Spencerian type hand.  How I admre the corkscrews and flourishes, swoops and glides that embellish the signatures of the signers of the Declaration of Independence say, or things like that which can have some of the fancy "i" dotting or "t" crossing that is the signature of so many advertising letters that drift into our mailbox constantly.

     But good handwriting I just don't have.  I've practiced the series of wrist movement o's and made pages of all letters alone.  They all stand up gracefully and lovely until they get attached to fellow members of the alphabet to form words and manage to be unreadable.

     When I send out vacation greetings I'm always in a rush.  Pop's rattling the car keys in my ear or the kids are anxious to get to the next point of interest, so what happens?  I scribble off little notes that are never read.  One of my friends showed me my card and asked me what I had written--she said it had been driving her crazy, and by golly, I couldn't read it either.  Now it's little you swearing off the pen forever.

     When I want to get an urgent message through, I type --but now and then in a rush I'll write (they say it's more personal that way) to daughter.  She's had my letters all over the dorm and not one could figure out if I'd said "we were coming to see her" or "I was sending some stockings by mail," which of course would make a slight difference in her thinking.

     There is this problem of getting a wild inspiration for a story or an idea for the great American novel in the middle of the night, when I reach for a pad and pencil to scribble my wonderful thought down to be pursued in the cold gray light of dawn.  I've probably some choice ideas penciled on that pad of paper if I could only read them.  One notation looks like "man in pajamas is killed by hair net" which sounds like a nifty idea for a crime story.

     But I've met my match in the exchange student we had living here a year ago.  His letters penned on air mail paper are a puzzle for a week.

     Our first reading we get first and last words, but entire sentences look as though they are written in a foreign language--and he does write in English.  Later readings and help from the whole family, (we've all had training in reading my penmanship) has the penned puzzle figured out.  He writes smaller and more cramped than I do so I figured I could jot my epistles to him in longhand and he'd be able to figure them out.

     But after a few letters went back and forth across the ocean there came one from him with many apologies and very polite "pardon me for mentioning," and "please don't think," I discovered he said he couldn't read my handwriting.

     So his printed message at the bottom of his letter has become my password.  "It's a truce--I'll print and please, type don't write."

Written January 31, 1963