gozzterLeave a Comment on I that am rudely stamped

I that am rudely stamped

I’ve found another one -another word that I didn’t know: cacography! I’m old now and can look forward to things I never had before: surprises, gifts…words. Who would have thought that something as simple as a new word could hold as much value -especially one which described a problem I only discovered recently: bad handwriting?

 Well a problem is not really a problem if you simply ignore it and use a detour, is it? After all, I am the path I take; we all are in the end I think. And anyway, not using a pen saves paper so I am proud that, over the years, I have saved forests. I have cultivated skillful fingers on a QWERTY keyboard -that’s something, isn’t it? That my thoughts, my ideas, and my communications have been readable over the years is something to be proud of: I am, as it were, eminently traceable. I hasten to add that I have used the adverb, not the adjective to describe my traceability; although I have often sought eminence, it has never sought me, so in what for many have been their golden years, I have settled for instead for brass… or maybe copper. Still, I am content.

But with Age, there are changes that force a certain curtailment of once-mastered activities: my fingers -well, one of them at any rate- no longer function as deftly as before. I wish I could blame it on a dissolute youth, but no memories glorify its fall from grace. I have neither heroic feats of valour, nor hair-raising escapades hiding in my past; the little finger of my left hand has merely gone rogue and, bent like a kyphotic back, defies any well intentioned remediation on my part.

I suppose it is a badge of age, and I show it proudly to anyone who asks. It doesn’t hurt, and if this is the debt I must pay for storing the number of years I have collected, then so be it. Anyway, as Victor Hugo described his famously deformed character, Quasimodo, my finger has a good character and is full of kindness, loyalty, and compassion.

So, in homage to its former past glories, I felt the time was ripe to embark once more on the flat seas of paper. The fact that I am right-handed seemed an auspicious sign: a recognition of the deformity without wreaking an undue burden on the unused hand -a burden glaringly evident on a previously welcoming keyboard that no longer recognizes the geography of the otherwise well-meaning little finger.

I mean, until well into my age of majority, I grasped a pen in my right hand and wrote as readably as might be expected. I never achieved calligraphic status at the time; I wrote to communicate, not to flaunt. How my left hand was occupying itself all the while never really rose to a level of even embarrassed awareness, I must confess.

It, on the other hand (sorry), must have felt some resentment at its brother’s importance. To lie fallow while important business was transacted without its input, must have galled; to be relegated to the shadows no doubt offered the time to sulk. My actual, fully-human brother, who was ten years older than me, could never understand that I, too, craved some time in the pulpit. Maybe it was also like that for a minor finger of a culturally maligned hand; because I’ve lived with both, I suppose I can guess, though.

Still, one has to hope there is value in patience, reward in biding one’s time: the mighty have much further to fall. I am reminded of the apocryphal ancient Roman practice of employing a slave to accompany a victorious general in the chariot on his parade through the streets to whisper memento mori in his ear: remember you too must die.

Okay, I don’t think my left hand would go that far, but I can imagine that in its many idle moments, it dreamt of it. Comeuppance is always sweet.

At any rate, this jeremiad is merely an introduction to the humility my handwriting suffered after so long in retirement, however. Who would have thought that something I’d practiced for so many years would dissolve into barely legible scribbles? I can still print, though, but its blocky crudess does not flow like the cursive waves I used to unleash upon the page; even the letters are uneven, and seldom resemble children from the same father.

In fact, I find I am forced to mix and match as I approach the end of a line; they all fit into words, I suppose, and their meanings are still decipherable, but there is an awkwardness that hints that I am no longer sure of who they are, and am sufficiently embarrassed at their clothing that I would hesitate to take them even to a MacDonalds for a snack.

So, in reading this, if you have been wondering whether I have somehow mastered the ability to print like a Word for Mac, I must confess that what you are looking at has taken me an inordinately long time to type and correct. I keep hitting the caps lock on any unguided sweep looking for the ‘a’ or the ‘w’. I seldom opt for a ‘q’ nowadays, I have to admit with a degree of wistfulness, but I suppose my unmanageable little Dupuytrenic finger has been smiling to itself all the while: revenge is sweet. As Prospero says in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, ‘At this hour lie at my mercy all mine enemies.’ I doubt if my deformed finger has actually read the play, however…

Still, much to its evident annoyance, I am learning compensatory mechanisms to bypass the faulty cog in the machine. I do not do it to be mean of course, nor do I wish the child on my left hand any harm. It can remain part of the family, but in a more coddled role. I mean there comes a time when we all need pampering, a time for grazing in the meadow.

Heaven only knows the rest of me will join it soon enough…

, , , ,

Leave a comment

search previous next tag category expand menu location phone mail time cart zoom edit close