Seventh Grade
Most of those of you who follow my blog know cursive handwriting when you see it and can even read it. But not many will practice their handwriting to make sure it is legible and looks pretty when signing documents or cards. A lot of people do not even send cards anymore. That is too much trouble and apparently something the younger generation thinks is so antiquated, they do not feel it even necessary.
So, we resign ourselves to the technology of today and send greetings via text or email. But I draw the line at some Thank you notes. If you are too busy and it is too much trouble to send a note, at least send a text or email acknowledging the gift. Do not relegate this obligation to a parent!! Afterall, that person has gone out of their way to send you something, it is curtesy and respect to at least let them know you received it.
This is a bee in my bonnet because I do send graduation gifts, shower gifts and flowers to funerals and I MIGHT get confirmation from a parent or not. Most of the time, I have to ask if it was received, which is awkward and ridiculous and then just pisses me off when they say, “Oh yeah, got that a while back.” Grrr. Would have been nice if someone had told me. I don’t know. Maybe the person who actually received the gift??? The last time I said something to a parent about hearing from her child, whom got a very nice gift from me, she said, “She is just so busy and these kids today barely know how to write. And she doesn’t have your number.” Really? You couldn’t give her my number and tell her to take 2 minutes to send me a text? I blame the parents 100% on that one! And said parent is a SCHOOL TEACHER! Oy!
I will say I have received cards from families I have sent flowers to. That seems to be something people still do, but I promise those cards are sent by someone over the age of 50, 99% of the time. I still receive some Thank you cards, and they are very nice to get. I give big kudos to the parents who have taught this recognition to their children.
Anyway, I digress. Getting back to cursive writing. When I was in the 7th grade, I had an English teacher who made it her mission to make sure all of her students were going to learn how to write properly in cursive. She gave us an assignment of writing a paper that was approximately 200 words in length. That is about one page on a piece of notebook paper if it is handwritten. However, every single word had to be perfectly written with perfect cursive letters. She would give it back to us with red marks all over it and make us do it again and again until it was correct. I forget how many times I got mine back, but I will say it was at least 5 times. We had to make every letter exactly the way she wanted us to, or else, we had to handwrite the entire thing over. It was all done in ink so there was no way to get around writing the whole document again. I had very good handwriting and I still do. However, I will not attribute this to her because I had started practicing my skills in the first grade. I will doodle my letters to this day.
My mother had beautiful handwriting and I wanted mine to look as pretty as her’s, so this was already something high on my priority list. The students all found this to be a tedious and unhelpful task. Wonder what she would think today? I really felt bad for the boys because she would get on them harder than the girls. Looking back, I think maybe she might have had a bit of a compulsion disorder because this was not the only thing she did. No one liked her and she was a strange lady, but I will forever know how to make my A, B, C’s!
I believe the next book I will read will be Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. I recently read an awesome review and thought it would be a great book to increase my repertoire of genre. 
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