Backhanded compliment

Many of you know my lifelong struggle with penmanship, so I share with you a small success story.

My Spanish professor actually complimented me on my handwriting recently. She said she was grading papers and a friend passed by. This friend looked at the handwriting on the paper and said how nice it was and it must be from a girl because it's so neat. Ha! No. It was mine. Really.

A small victory. I spent a long time making the letters clear so my professor knew exactly what to mark wrong.

The struggle

I've had neatness issues with my writing from as far back as I can recall. I'm really lefthanded but write with my right hand. Seems I was persuaded (inch by inch, if you will) to switch from left to right early on in my life.

By the time I was in junior high school, my handwriting was atrocious. I recall my Latin teacher railing about its sloppiness. Even at the blackboard, I often had to rewrite my conjugated verbs (Sum, es, est, summus, estes, sunt, or something like that, right?)

In college, my geology professor chuckled at how I held my pen (like I was lefthanded, he'd say, despite holding it in my right. Did I have rocks in my head?) and handwritten letters home became impossible for my parents to decipher (except when I wrote, SEND MONEY. That was clear).

Even now, coworkers cringe at my notes and people who get Christmas cards stare for hours at the scribbles hoping for a Rosetta stone moment. All I can say is I'm happy for e-mail and computer printouts.

One of my daughters writes with her left hand and I'm glad no one has persauded her to make the switch.

Thought: The writing's on the wall. I just can read it.