What I have missed the most over the years is a letter in my post and buying stamps to send one. I saw the old post man in his Khaki government uniform today after almost a year or more. It's odd how the digital has taken over, I love technology, I indeed do. I am waiting for the dragon speak (or so I've heard people call it) software to launch! Then the talking speed will kill the typing speed and cure people of carpel tunnel syndrome and other disorders related to being restricted to the keyboard.However, when you've been to a school where they made you write your defaulted homework 25 times or made you write the same futile / fallible sentence 'I will not misbehave in class' 100 times - you will miss writing! Especially the fancy pencils (with rubbers on the back or back- scratching plastic holders; yes, I had cartoon ones as well!) and the fantastic (leaking) china pens!
Then there were those hated summers with the cursive writing books - and gladly they were discontinued during the 'secondary school'. That was the phase I enjoyed observing people the most! Our hand-writings' were developing just as our hormones were charging, our minds were shaping, our idiosyncrasy speaking out loud. The straight arrows in the sky, stuck to each other words or the one finger gutter space between them or the circular pearls that always won the best hand-writing competition. There were also the grasshopper's legs or the large elephant like writing that took-up three words on a line. The long 'g, j,y' loops that ended on the heads of other letters or clashed with the 'l, t, p'. None of them now can be seen, my handwriting analysis course also lays waste.
I don't care for what has gone but what is left of it remains hidden in a questioning poignant space in the mind. When personal quirks of handwriting, the emotional upswings and downswings marked on a page becomes an alien thing; When Times New Roman, Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial feels like an extension of the self, while our own fingers, their handwriting feels like an aberration, an embarrassment, an oddity. Then, don't we lose something- some ability?
I feel it today, know that many do too. A decade from now, I won't feel a thing. I won't miss any of my well preserved stationary.
However, I have to thank my mother for all the cursive writing I've had do. Just feels right to thank her.
