My pen is to dirty to touch down on the pad

As a child I learn to print my name. One of the first things I remember learning in fact. I had to sit down learn the letters so I could spell my name. So after a lot of hard work there it was my name in print. B Y R O N in big capital letters. I soon learned how to print lower case letters as well. In the first two grades that is what we were taught. How to print! 

Finally I was able to print well and in between the lines. Then they flip my brain upside down and teach hand writing or script as some would call it. It was like a brain freeze everyday ! It was ten times as painful. I just gained the confidence in expressing myself in the form of writing. I began writing stories in fact! Then boom...i am cut down in my prime and learn that my printing is now a mundane, ignorant and juvenile way to express my self. I was crush, here I think I am Charles Dickens and I am really a Alfred E. Newman. 

Folks it took me a long time to get the hang of script...a very long time. I kept on slipping print letters in. The b, the t, the i and I am sure many more of my alphabet friends. I finally got it one sunny day in July when i was writing a short essay on the origins of silly putty, when i looked down and noticed that my writing was perfect. You know when the northern lights come out when your driving to see someone you love and some Dashboard Confessional is blaring "Hands down this is the best night..." and your oh so glad your not outside in that frigid weather but just as overjoyed you get to see that beauty and feel that moment. Yes indeed that is the feeling that day. Not only that but I just made myself one of those bracelets made from clothes pins. (Nathan you know what I am talking about)

Then what do these fine educators do but tell us to print again! Did you know most legal documents, forms and anything and everything official is to be printed...IN CAPITAL LETTERS! What I learned and mastered at the age of five. I have some choice words to give to these crack pot know it all's! So what happened in my latter years of public eduction? I developed a style called Chicken scratch! A form that is in the waiting for 10 years. They teach you all these years, in grain these styles of writing in your psyche and then get you so topsy turvey that you start dressing up as Elizbeth Taylor singing I'm a little tea pot with a Alice Cooper T-shirt on and reversible slacks. (though I could imagine I would look good with pearls) We are doomed to fail from day one. To write shopping list, personal letters, that we our selves cannot read! All I got from it all is this warped hand and a twisted brain. I look at what my pen produces and I am physical sick. And I can't go back. I can't really hand write and I can't really print. No one was there to help me sort out this mess. And what a mess it is.I needed a strong male role model. A man with a tie and a nice hair cut who knew the ancient secret of both hand writing and printing. Who could fill out those legal documents with out messing up his b's or O's. But could also take personal notes at a break neck speed if he was to take a 3rd level theology course. Guess what? He does not exist! This Ken, this super human being with perfect wit and perfect teeth is an abomination of breeding. These schools set you up to fail. Yes they give you the tools, but they do not show you how to use them. So we got kids sticking hammers in their noses and using pitch forks to brush the sleep from out their eyes. The tools are there but no instruction on what they are for. Guess what folks I throw fuel on the fire and now i have stubs for arms and leg and no eye brows. (Do you know how people look at you if you have no eye brows?!) The fire was my eduction and the fuel was printing and hand writing. No one helped me! No one showed me the way (Even Luke Skywalker had his Obe Won) So I have a chicken scratch hand and am doomed for a life time with it! Thank the Lord for computers or you would not know if this blog was about the faults of eduction or about the migrating habits of the African Swallow.
Anyway
MERRY CHRISTMAS

~B.F.