Horrible Hand
Master of Calligraphy
I had the worst handwriting in our class. And were you to believe my second-grade teacher, who shall remain nameless in order to protect the guilty, I more than likely also had the worst handwriting in the town, in the county, in the country, if not the entire world—or, why not, while we’re at it, in the entire cosmos.
Granted, and I’ll be the first to admit it, my handwriting was bad (still is, and forever shall be); both block-lettering it and tongue-between-teething it as cursive script.
With one exception: I knew how to cursively form a legible, even quite beautiful, capital “H”. I had practiced this letter for weeks along with my across-the-landing neighbor friend, whose last name began with a capital “H” and whose Dad showed us how to cursively draw one. This is how the best-friendly competition began to see who could write it the best, a race that was never settled since we had no impartial judge to evaluate and grade our efforts; in fact, we graded our efforts ourselves and always gave our own “H” top marks (10) while the other’s kinda stunk, a 2 or a 3 most.
Yes, I knew how to form a capital “H” really well but my cursive prowess ended right there—the rest of my upper and lower case alphabet was pretty hard for anyone (including my second-grade teacher) to make out; it took some agile imagination (something my second-grade teacher lacked) with a good helping of deductive reasoning and some clever guessing (which my second-grade teacher also lacked).
True, I could read what I wrote, but only because I knew what I had meant to write.
My Mom, Lisbet, had an amazingly clear and beautiful cursive hand. My grandma Olga even more so; I’d marvel at Olga’s letters, little works of art. But the cursive-ability genes ran out (screeching halt, full stop) with my Mom, none passed on to me, nary a one.
My dad had a horrible hand as well, and his cursive genes not only made it safely across to me en masse, but once arrived they more or less went to war to establish who’s boss around here when it came to letter-writing. All other script genes, from whatever source and generation, soon sued for peace and were given the humane choice of either suicide or deportation.
It’s been said that the genetic dust didn’t settle for days.
Leaving Dad’s horrible handwriting genes in charge and me with the worst handwriting in the known universe.
But here’s the rub (and the reason for this essay): Not only did my teacher point this out to me time and again, without really offering up a solution, but before she was done, she stepped so far beyond the pale that she couldn’t even see the pale from there, to wit:
In class one morning, after another handwriting exercise slash test, she mused over my offering for a while and then stood up, holding up my collection of inky (yes, ink in those days) marks for all to see, saying, loudly and clearly, “This is Ulf’s handwriting. It is the worst handwriting in this class. It is the worst handwriting I have ever seen. And be warned, if you don’t practice well and stay diligent, your handwriting might end up like this.”
And all the little second-grade girls, eyes unbelieving, drew a communal intake of shocked air and then expelled an equally communal breath of disbelief. Save us, Teacher, save us.
Perhaps I’m putting a little bit of extra cream on this bun, but not much, let me tell you. My shocked little female classmates were real enough, the teacher holding me up as a shocking example of human script depravity was real enough: and I had to endure this. I had absolutely nothing to raise in my defense, my handwriting was that bad. But for a seven-year-old boy, I think this was a little much to swallow—I’m still trying.
My handwriting has not improved over the following nearly seven decades. Perhaps I’m getting even with my teacher in some twisted, unfathomable way—yes, I’m the worst, you’re right, and I’ve stayed the worst. Thanks for pointing this out and for your non-help.
Of course, that is why God, in His infinite wisdom and Heavenly Mercy invented the laptop.
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