The scratches on the paper which the ant may make are what my handwriting looks like....
INTROSPECTION
When you have been blessed with extremely good looks, an extraordinary personality and intelligence, you can literally get away with illegible handwriting. Unfortunately, I don’t possess any of the above. So, for me, it is embarrassment galore.
Yup, I have passable looks, a quirky personality, and below genius intelligence. And as if that wasn’t enough, I have extremely bad handwriting.
Imagine tying a pen/pencil – come to think of it that would be quite a feat – and putting it on a sheet of paper. The scratches on the paper which the ant may make are what my handwriting looks like.
I have nothing against ants, after the octopus and jellyfish, they are third on my list of favourite animals. The others on my list include the orthotomus sutorius (common tailorbird) – these should be replaced by the parrot as pet in Pakistan considering tailors give us grief; and torquigener albomaculosus (white-spotted pufferfish).
I have a habit of going off on a tangent, and in case you are thinking I have a lot of time, I don’t I still have to binge-watch so many shows and also keep updated with BTS. It is just that recently I tried to read my own writing.
It so happened that I was invited as a speaker on a panel and while sitting, listening to the other speakers, I began scribbling down points that I thought I would use on my turn to speak. I had seen many intellectuals do this on talk shows; they take down notes and then refer to the points they had jotted down.
As the saying goes, a copycat is not original (not a real saying, I just made that up).
When it was my turn to speak, I looked at my paper and the scribbling mocked me. All the swirls, curves and weird lines that were supposed to be letters mocked me as they danced on my page. To my horror I had no idea what these weird patterns were, I didn’t know what they were and for a whole eternity, there was silence. A few seconds, really.
It is a good thing that I speak a lot (I won’t say well because I am humble) and was saved from embarrassment, and spoke with a lot of passion and even got applause. But I could not let the uneasy feeling go every time my eyes fell on the squiggles.
If you think doctors have bad handwriting, just think I am an MBBS – at least the chemists can read doctors’ writing. Even I can’t read my handwriting and it does not help when you are trying to reprimand your kids to improve their writing. You can’t even practise what you preach!
But as the song goes ‘…Whatever you do, don’t put the blame on you’. And I also have an excuse.
It all began when I was born left-handed and my overly superstitious extended family had issues with nature. From claims that left-handed people were not normal - even evil - and it would cause a lot of issues in the future like who would marry a left-handed girl. It was as being left-handed was an omen of gloom and doom when, in fact, it was just a rarity in a world of right-handed people.
Some experts claim that ‘both sides of the brain tend to communicate more effectively’ in left-handed people, and that they ‘may have superior language and verbal ability’. Even though this study is inconclusive, I want to believe it. It makes my bad handwriting issue sound more sophisticated.
Another thing I can blame for my bad handwriting is that I have been using the computer for more than 25 years. I have been doing all my writing and editing on a keyboard and seldom use a pen or pencil. This has only added to my inability to write clearly.
Over the years, I have become so used to using the keyboard I can even type when I am not looking at the keyboard – this fascinates my young nephews and nieces. They sit with me and ask me to type out words without looking and I get a lot of ohhhss and aaahs of appreciation from the kids. It is an ego boost.
The more I used the keyboard to write, the less proficient I have become writing with a pen/pencil on paper. During this time, I have taken several examinations, and have found it quite painful to write.
It is quite time-consuming and tedious to make my writing more readable so that the examiners don’t throw my paper out because of frustration. By the end of the paper, which is less than three hours, my hand would be aching and stiff and I would have to keep stopping and resting my hand.
Typing on a computer allows autocorrect, which leads to another weakness – spellings. You tend to rely so much on the autocorrect that you begin to forget how to spell words. It takes a lot of effort to spell properly. All the long hours learning spelling in school goes to waste once you get addicted to autocorrect.
My writing sample will provide a lot of problems for the writing experts as my writing varies in the same document. The experts base their opinions on the direction different letters turn or the way the dots are placed over the i and j or how the s curves, or how the letter l is written. I will prove to be a big challenge as my writing reveals a mixture of all these.
I manage to write letters that bend left and right, and also stand up straight. There are curls and swirls, with dots all over. My script is enough to confuse any handwriting expert. Those who determine personalities through one’s writing will also get tired trying to guess my personality traits.
They base their conclusions on the size of someone’s handwriting – small letters determine that the person is shy, studious and meticulous. Large handwriting reveals the person is outgoing, bolder and love attention. Yup, some parts of my writing are small and some parts are larger which means that I am not only a left-handed person turned to a right-handed person, but also a complex personality. Outgoing and shy.
But I am in luck as more and more people are using smartphones and we have a generation of people with bad handwriting who are used to typing on the keypad on their phones while chatting. I will just blend in with the rest.
