When I read that today is National Handwriting Day, memories of my 3rd grade classroom flood my thoughts… All I can think is: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” That year, ink always smeared across my hand from writing the assigned sentence, the one with every letter of the alphabet, over and over and over on full sheets of binder paper… only for the teacher to gently tap the paper with a ruler and tell me to do it again because the letters did not slant consistently line after line. If you are right-handed, I envy you. Handwriting with a consistent slant when you are left-handed is not easy! But, thanks to the persistence of my 3rd grade teacher, my left-handed handwriting is neater than most and I don’t bend my wrist backwards to write.
Just thinking about this has brought back some wonderful memories.
- Having contests with my best friend (also a lefty) to see who had less ink on their hand at the end of the day.
- Trying to sign less legible than a doctor
- Writing letters to Senators, trying to impress them before I was old enough to vote.
- Comparing my writing to those in my year books.
It also makes me think of how I always confuse left and right. When I started to learn to write, I believed my left hand was my right hand because that was the hand I wrote with. Write hand! LOL It drives my husband crazy because I still get my directions wrong. I’m usually saying, “Go right” when I mean “Go left.” OOPS! The only place I get my directions correct is backstage in a theatre. To most people, backstage is backwards. To me, backstage is “right”.
The day I learned my “write” hand wasn’t my right hand was the day I learned I think differently. It isn’t necessarily bad to think differently, you just have to find the right place to think that way. My “write” place is here, among words of books and plays, sometimes in front of the stage and sometimes behind it!
Have you found your “right” place yet?
Can other people read your handwriting?
