The curse of cursive: Why Dave and I need forensics for our cookware
Karen Norris/Staff
My husband, Dave, and I argue about whose mom gave us what. Evidently our mothers had the same cookware. We鈥檝e got the nesting colored Pyrex bowls. We鈥檝e got the flour sifter with the red knob. We鈥檙e never going to agree on the meat grinder 鈥� the kind you clamp to the counter.
My mom made roast beef hash with hers. Dave鈥檚 mom made corned beef hash with hers. We鈥檒l have to bring in the forensics unit to settle it. We each want to claim provenance. We miss our moms, and we don鈥檛 want to let go of them.
鈥淪ee that?鈥� Dave says, pointing to the handwriting in the ancient and grease-stained copy of the 鈥淛oy of Cooking鈥� with the sprung spine and loose pages. 鈥淭hat is definitely my mom鈥檚. I know her handwriting.鈥� I know my mom鈥檚 handwriting, too. They are identical.
Why We Wrote This
鈥淒oing what you鈥檙e told鈥� came naturally to the so-called Greatest Generation 鈥� for their midcentury offspring, not so much. Who knew how that distinction could complicate kitchenware?
They were both schooled in the Palmer Method of cursive writing, and not only were they drilled in it 鈥� as were we 鈥� but they also adhered to it. Dave and I are midcentury children. As a matter of policy, we didn鈥檛 do what our elders told us to do.
I didn鈥檛, anyway. Dave, though, still has what used to be called 鈥渁n elegant hand.鈥� His cursive is regular and graceful. It impressed me when I met him. Somehow, it seemed that if a man had an elegant hand, it said something about his character.
As it turned out, it did. Dave learned the Palmer Method as we all did, and no doubt fell away, but then picked it up again in middle school. Specifically, he wanted to write exactly the way his mom did. That way, he could write his own excuse notes. To this day, although he is not otherwise an exceptional speller, he can correctly spell 鈥渄iarrhea.鈥�
The Palmer Method was designed to be easy and efficient. I also recall that one was supposed to move the pencil with one鈥檚 whole arm, rotating comfortably from the padded portion of your resting forearm. One was not supposed to move the pencil with just the fingers.
When the teacher wasn鈥檛 looking, we moved the pencil with just our fingers. As a result, our hands got crampy and tired, and our handwriting deteriorated.
Where a lot of us went really wrong was deciding we should be more artistic about our handwriting. Ah, wayward youth! No, we should not. My fifth grade teacher wrote with little backward threes for the letter 鈥渆.鈥� It looked cool. Immediately I began trying to jam in little backward threes, and that took some jamming. They don鈥檛 really fit that well. Not only that, but they don鈥檛 hook up to any of the other letters. So every time an 鈥渆鈥� came up in a word, which is often, I had to lift the pencil to get it started, and before long I was lifting it for other letters too. The Palmer Method 鈥渞鈥� didn鈥檛 look like an 鈥渞鈥� until I鈥檇 written it as a capital letter, only smaller. I believe 鈥済鈥檚鈥� were the next to get complicated. By the time I was in junior high I was basically printing, only on a slant, with many of the letters miniaturized uppercase versions.
It was a mess. The Palmer Method sends graceful cursive gazelles loping across the page. My script looks like I opened up the monkey cage. I can鈥檛 read my own writing. I鈥檝e kept scraps of paper on which I have scribbled something important, probably. We鈥檒l never know.
These days, kids have mad keyboard skills but cursive writing is no longer routinely taught, although many educators are advocating for it again. Among other things, they say you should learn cursive to be able to write and sign checks.
That may not be the selling point they think it is.
Also, you should learn cursive so you can read other people鈥檚 cursive. This won鈥檛 come up often. Many children are cursive-illiterate in their own language. When Grandma鈥檚 handwritten birthday letter shows up with an antique check floating out of it, they are completely stupefied, but bless their modern hearts, they do know which recycling bin it all goes into.
The more compelling arguments include that cursive improves people鈥檚 fine motor skills and aids in the retention of information.
Dave 鈥� with his elegant hand 鈥� has retained a dead certainty about the meat grinder. He鈥檒l go to the mat for that one. And I鈥檒l let him do it.
But the krumkake iron was my mom鈥檚. You can鈥檛 fake Norwegian.