Is This You? The Pyramids and Cursive Writing

 I woke up this morning with a song in my head. It was a song that is not a song yet. More of an idea for a song. I know, I know, we all have a song that, if we could just get it to the right voice, we would make millions. Well, this is not that song. Just an idea. The chorus line or line that defines the feeling is, “I can do it myself.” Where did it come from? Beats me, but there it was. 

Actually, I apparently was thinking about how we seem to be able to do a lot of things ourselves. We seem to think we can conquer the world without the help of our parents, siblings, family, and friends. That I can tell you, after thinking about it with that crazy song in my head, it is not the least bit true. As a little girl, I thought I could pour the tea for my stuffed bear and dog guests without so much as a hand of help from my mom. Eventually, after she finally let me have actual Kool-Aid in my teapot my white fuzzy bear, whose name was Snow White, became known as Rosie. Yes, it was cherry Kool-Aid. Enough said. When I think back, that may have been my first lesson on how it is okay to let someone help with tasks that are above my pay grade.

It usually takes, I am guessing here, more than ten but, hopefully, less than fifty episodes like my tea party mishap to learn it is alright to say, “Yes, I could use some help.” Hopefully it happens before you end up in an ER because an extension ladder really does stand safer when someone holds it in place. Yikers. Life is the best learning experience, isn’t it?

Learning, that’s where apparently my song, the one that will make me rich and famous, came from. A few days ago, around my beloved kitchen table, which in these parts has become known as a “Free Zone.” Where what you say stays in my ears only. Oh, the wonderful things that I have learned in my “Free Zone.” Anyway. This thing was not a secret. It was just a talk about, of all things, cursive writing. If you haven’t been in on a talk about this nearly lost art, you and I both have to get out more. 

Did you know that cursive writing is not something taught in school anymore? How could that have happened? I still feel the exciting tingle I got when, in the 5th grade, we began to learn cursive writing. The teacher wrote on the blackboard, “Trina, would you like to learn to write like this?” It was so pretty, and I was so excited. Then, the art of drawing line after line of ovals and circles, over and over again, began. Teaching hands, that up to that point only printed, how to flow with letters. It was like magic. Something after time was just taken for granted. Until… 

I was conducting business at our local bank when I had to sign something, and so did the teller. The young, early twenty-something teller printed her name. I questioned if that was okay or should she sign it, you know, with a signature. She said that was her signature. I then asked her why she didn’t write it out. It was a lightbulb moment. I asked if she knew how to write in cursive. Crickets. It was like falling into a deep, dark abyss where nothing made sense. To either of us. I took a pen and wrote her name all curly and pretty. She had never, I say again, never seen her name written in cursive. I could tell because she asked me what it said. When I told her it was her name, she remarked that it looked cool. Oh, where did time go so wrong?

That was just the core of the Free Zone discussion that afternoon. It morphed into times tables in the back of math books that were timed to get the answers as fast as possible. The young’uns around the table asked why it was important to know what 8 times 6 and 4 times 9 equaled. And how quickly we could do line after line of those times tables. After all, came the remark, that is what computers are for. Aarrgghh.

Don’t get me wrong. Computers have done so much for the human race. They helped get us to the moon—and back. Figured out the mysteries of DNA. But. Yes, a digital “but.” But, computers still can’t tell us exactly how the pyramids were built or how to write in cursive. 

Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at [email protected].

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