Cursing Cursive

When Grace and I were growing up, we had to learn the basics like how to read, do arithmetic (that’s math young people), understand and speak a language (in our case this was french and english with solid phonetics), and to write. 

And when I mean write – I mean write in cursive. That’s where your letters are all connected, flow like liquid gold, and have gorgeous curves throughout the capital and lower case letters. When you’re fluent in cursive writing, it’s like a beautiful dance between écriture and personality that seamlessly come together.

We used to practice our absolute best cursive writing when we were in elementary school and had to write book reports – then into high school when we wrote essays. No kids, there were not computers in most homes yet - or if there were, your parents were very very well off. We didn’t get our first home computer until I was 19. I know, shocking right?

Quoting Mr. St. Sauveur “Ow do you not ave a computer in your ome - you ave running wah-tair don’t you?”. He was later reprimanded for that comment, but that story is for another day. The point of his belittling was that if you can afford running water, you should be able to afford a computer.

When learning to write cursive, you are handed this wonderfully crisp empty ledger booklet with lines showing the heights of capital and lowercase letters, the powerful ascenders like “t” and “k” and the playful descenders like “p” and it’s mirrored neighbour “q”. This was to help teach us the structure and flow of cursive writing.

I loved cursive writing. I developed what my friends (and now colleagues) refer to as “teacher handwriting” (thanks Mom - oh and I can write in a straight line on a chalk board - are those even in schools anymore?). My handwriting is artistic, curvy, personalized and definitely shows my character. When I was learning, it was uneven, crooked, sometimes diagonal, and I definitely had trouble with complex capital letters like D, B and the rarely used Z (pronounced zed - because we’re normal here in Canada).

It was only in 2019 where I realized that the stunningly stylized handwriting I perfected in the 90s – had fallen through the cracks, and was possibly lost in the crypts of a grammatical graveyard.

I had written positive affirmation notes for each one of my athletes as we went into the most prestigious tournament in eastern Canada for competitive softball. I was coaching U16 that year.

I was so thrilled to have written them in my best cursive, each with heartfelt words of encouragement and reassurance personalized for each athlete. Until one opened her card, smiled, and looked at me with appreciation then muttered - “can you read this to me, I can’t read cursive.”

As my heart broke a tiny bit that day – not because I was asked to read the note out loud to her, but because something that I held so dearly had become obsolete. With young people today, handwriting seems to be more of an afterthought. They prefer texting and yelling at each other in all caps, using acronyms that you have to look up, and silly pictures of eggplants or peaches (from what I’m told, are now pornographic produce). It seems the art of personalized scripture has gone the wayside.

Maybe one day it will resurrect as “vintage” or “trendy” or the latest “fad” – but to me, it will always be a fond memory around hours of practicing in my crisp new ledger the beauty of my name – forging my mother’s signature on a failed test – or simply writing a card to a friend.

Learn to write grasshopper. You’ll need to sign your life away someday – might as well make it a beautiful statement of who you are, and who you want to be. And no, banks do not allow emojis as a signature. A lot of signatures aren't legible, but eggplant is not your name – unless it's Richard.

Love, 

Patricia