Fluffy Cookies
Angelic Demon
Did you know that approximately 10% of the world’s population is left-handed? Well, I am a part of that 10%, and so are my older sister and my dad. The first sign I had that signified I was left-handed was when I found it uncomfortable to hold my spoon in my right hand. How would it have felt to hold a pencil? For the three of us, we had to learn how to write in a different way than most of our peers.
As small children, it didn’t make much of a difference in writing because of the sweaty-palm, tight-fisted way we held our writing tools; everything was the same feeling. However, as I got older, holding a pencil a certain way became required for proper handwriting. Most people write with the utensil resting on their ring finger and their middle and index fingers are pushing the tool in a certain direction to make the letter or word. Their thumb-pads are not touching it. Instead it is resting across the utensil to stabilize it from falling out of their hand. However, the way I hold a pencil or a pen is with my thumb-pad on the utensil. It gives me a higher sense of control over what I am writing or drawing. The only other difference is that it’s the opposite hand.
Printing the letters was easy enough. Of course, it took up a lot of room on the paper. Soon I found ways to make my letters smaller and take up less space per line. Even then, taking notes on history and math subjects caused me to write frantically and my printing to get out of hand. I couldn’t write fast enough to catch up. By third grade, we started practicing how to write in cursive. The task was hard enough, asking a bunch of rowdy, eight-year-olds to sit and use their brains to write in a way they are not used to. To make the horrible-looking mess look a little prettier, there was a way we had to rotate our books, and it depended on what hand you wrote with. At this time, you didn’t have desks, you had tables and chairs and sat with each other. The chairs were so close together, because we were small, that when I turned my book, it would overlap the book the kid next to me was writing in. It was a nuisance. The part that was especially difficult for me was which way to curl the bottom part of a ‘p’, ‘q’, and ‘g’.
We stopped learning how to write in cursive the next year. I thought, “Why would you have us learn something we are not going to finish?” Truly, I was irritated, but I let it go and continued to hand-print my notes. In sixth grade, we had nametags on our desks and it had cursive letters, both uppercase and lowercase, and some simple math things. I continued to hand-print my notes throughout the year.
By the summer, I decided to start writing in cursive. It was a struggle at first, always having to go back to the nametag for how to write the next letter. My hand wasn’t used to performing like this, so it was still pretty uncomfortable. I went back to printing for a bit while I was practicing for a little bit every day. Seventh grade rolled around, and I got so used to writing in cursive that it was almost second nature to me. Some of my teachers were impressed with the fact that I knew how to write like this, asking, “They still teach that in elementary school?” I told them, “No, they stopped when I got to fourth grade, so I taught myself the rest.”
Now, I write in cursive every single day and writing in print tends to be uncomfortable. I sometimes find myself going back through some of my old works and assignments, seeing how terrible I used to write, using bigger letters that take up a quarter of the line. I laugh at myself every time. When I get to where I began cursive writing, I look at how I’ve evolved from the beginning to how I write now. Some of the old stuff is better than now, but most of it is the best fresh. I don’t hand-print much. It’s almost painful now.
As small children, it didn’t make much of a difference in writing because of the sweaty-palm, tight-fisted way we held our writing tools; everything was the same feeling. However, as I got older, holding a pencil a certain way became required for proper handwriting. Most people write with the utensil resting on their ring finger and their middle and index fingers are pushing the tool in a certain direction to make the letter or word. Their thumb-pads are not touching it. Instead it is resting across the utensil to stabilize it from falling out of their hand. However, the way I hold a pencil or a pen is with my thumb-pad on the utensil. It gives me a higher sense of control over what I am writing or drawing. The only other difference is that it’s the opposite hand.
Printing the letters was easy enough. Of course, it took up a lot of room on the paper. Soon I found ways to make my letters smaller and take up less space per line. Even then, taking notes on history and math subjects caused me to write frantically and my printing to get out of hand. I couldn’t write fast enough to catch up. By third grade, we started practicing how to write in cursive. The task was hard enough, asking a bunch of rowdy, eight-year-olds to sit and use their brains to write in a way they are not used to. To make the horrible-looking mess look a little prettier, there was a way we had to rotate our books, and it depended on what hand you wrote with. At this time, you didn’t have desks, you had tables and chairs and sat with each other. The chairs were so close together, because we were small, that when I turned my book, it would overlap the book the kid next to me was writing in. It was a nuisance. The part that was especially difficult for me was which way to curl the bottom part of a ‘p’, ‘q’, and ‘g’.
We stopped learning how to write in cursive the next year. I thought, “Why would you have us learn something we are not going to finish?” Truly, I was irritated, but I let it go and continued to hand-print my notes. In sixth grade, we had nametags on our desks and it had cursive letters, both uppercase and lowercase, and some simple math things. I continued to hand-print my notes throughout the year.
By the summer, I decided to start writing in cursive. It was a struggle at first, always having to go back to the nametag for how to write the next letter. My hand wasn’t used to performing like this, so it was still pretty uncomfortable. I went back to printing for a bit while I was practicing for a little bit every day. Seventh grade rolled around, and I got so used to writing in cursive that it was almost second nature to me. Some of my teachers were impressed with the fact that I knew how to write like this, asking, “They still teach that in elementary school?” I told them, “No, they stopped when I got to fourth grade, so I taught myself the rest.”
Now, I write in cursive every single day and writing in print tends to be uncomfortable. I sometimes find myself going back through some of my old works and assignments, seeing how terrible I used to write, using bigger letters that take up a quarter of the line. I laugh at myself every time. When I get to where I began cursive writing, I look at how I’ve evolved from the beginning to how I write now. Some of the old stuff is better than now, but most of it is the best fresh. I don’t hand-print much. It’s almost painful now.
