The quote of the month is

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!”

Rebekah is our daughter and her Dad is a published author. I just wanted to share with my blog readers a great essay she wrote. Thanks for your patience with a very proud Mama!

“I Am Going To Be A Doctor”

I was recently cleaning out a closet and came across an old penmanship notebook from the second grade. How cute, I thought, and sat down to reminisce. It turned out that this trip down memory lane was a rough one. My handwriting scores were awful! I was getting C’s and D’s and all kinds of comments from the teacher like, “Slow down!”, Use your margins.”, and even “This is unacceptable!” I have struggled with ugly handwriting my whole life. Only recently have I come to believe that perhaps my bad handwriting has always been a part of my destiny.
I remember doing writing exercises in kindergarten. I would try so hard, but whenever I picked up a pencil my hands seemed to have a mind of their own. My teacher would look over my shoulder and say, “Now Wendy, don’t round off your W’s. They should be straight and sharp.” Try as I might, my W’s were always round, and so were my M’s. My J’s were too fat. My I’s and L’s all looked the same, and that cursive Z? Forget about it. My bad handwriting was an entity out of my control. No matter how I visualized what I wanted to write, it would come out garish, inflated and sloppy. Nothing like my mother’s perfect hand. Her penmanship was always dainty and lady like; everything mine was not.
At some point in my early years I became aware of my father’s awful handwriting. To my great relief it occurred to me that maybe it was genetic! My father’s penmanship was actually worse than mine. He called it chicken scratch, but I don’t know any chicken that could read anything that man wrote. It looked like angry hieroglyphics: way off the lines, no respect for margins, jagged and slurred. Whenever I would comment on it he would always reply, “Before I felt called to become a minister, I was headed for medical school. That’s why I have handwriting like a doctor’s.” (I have never gotten over the fact that he chose to become a penniless preacher instead of a doctor, but that’s another story.) My father’s comments about doctors having messy handwriting allowed me to believe that perhaps my illegible script was merely a symptom of my superior intellect. Maybe my dad wasn’t a doctor, but he was a very, very smart preacher. For some time, I was able to brush off all of the comments I would hear any time I handed over something I had written by hand. I felt like maybe my sloppy handwriting meant I was set apart. There were bigger things in store for me than just pretty handwriting.
This self-deception that I wrote poorly because I was so smart has been called in to question in my adult years. On the occasion that I send someone a card for a birthday or a baby shower, I look over my note and think A five year old with a crayon could do a better job. I find it hard to be taken seriously as an adult who still has not mastered writing in cursive, or even print for that matter. Recently I wrote a very heartfelt, open and honest letter to my boyfriend. I toiled over not only the content, but my handwriting as well. I went slowly. I talked myself down saying, “Slow down Wendy, use your margins, stay on the lines, You Can Do It!” I mailed it to him so that he would be particularly surprised seeing as how we see each other every day. One day after work he said to me, “I got your letter today.” I smiled in anticipation, wondering what he thought of all of the heartfelt things I wrote. “Your handwriting is terrible,” he said. That was the moment that I finally admitted to myself that my handwriting was terrible, and it was never going to change.
So, here I am back in school struggling once again to read my own notes from various classes. I am schlepping my way through English Comp. to enter the nursing program here at NWACC. Sometimes I wonder how much of that has to do with my penmanship. Maybe somewhere in my mind I made the decision to enter the field of health professional so that my messy handwriting will finally get some respect. That’s the plan so far. First I will get my RN, then a Masters then yes, one day, a PhD. So for now when people comment on how poorly I write, I hold my head high and respond, “I am going to be a doctor.”