When was a kid, I didn't have the best penmanship, but it was my own.But I lost my own style when I began forging notes in my mom's handwriting style in order to skip school.
I skipped school a lot, but not in the way that makes for exciting stories. Mostly I liked to spend time by myself, to take a break from the intensity of teenage-dom. I would spend afternoons watching movies, in used book stores and - this is something I have always loved but never do anymore - eating in restaurants alone. With a book. Pre-cellphone, no distractions, leaning over bowls of noodles in chinatown and splattering a paperback novels.
But back to the notes and the forged script. I got so good at faking my mom's handwriting that I kind of forgot how to do my own. After hours of practice, and long after I got caught, her shaky illegible scrawl consumed my own evolving, passable cursive. I still write like my mom, all these years later. Although you might argue that I should just own it, already.
There's a lesson in this somewhere. I think about anything you try on in order to pass yourself on as someone else. Eventually even that fake stuff gets absorbed, sometimes it overtakes you, and you forget how you used to do it - what was authentic to you.
But there's hope in here. You can rewire parts of yourself to be good things, too, right? More patient, generous, attentive. Try it on for size. Practice the looping I's and the disjointed K's. Soon you'll have a whole new hand.
