Well I know hell, damn and bi-
I occasionally wonder what it would be like to go back to elementary school. It’s not that I have any particular craving to relive the days of innocence lost. It’s not that I want to find comfort in a simpler life. No, if it were for one of these noble and beautiful desires you would all be very confused about the Eli you know (the real Eli that is, not the Asian one. He inhabits a reality which transcends confusion.)
My reason for wanting to go back is of course the direct product of one of my basest and most ridiculous grudges. My sole inspirtation for wanting to return lies in that monstrous beast, that bestial monster - - cursive script.
I sometimes wonder how many worksheets I filled with “aaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbbb cccccccccc etc etc etc.” How many times did I copy out ridiculous phrases like “A Bastard Child Died Early Friday, Grieving Horrified Indians Joined Klingons Mourning New Offenses. Proposals Questioned Rights Shown To Underage Villains Wielding Xylophones Yesterday. ‘Zounds!?”
Of course were it in print, these tasks would have been childishly simple. But no, cursive was the name of the game. And every day I would come home with aching wrists, strained eyes and a broken heart.
Why the hell didn’t any of us raise our voices in protest? Oh how I longed to take my Introduction to Cursive worksheet and scrawl across it in crude red ink: “ffffffffff uuuuuuuuuu cccccccccc kkkkkkkkkk – how’s that for curse-ive, teacher bitch?” But alas I did no such thing. I simply sat quietly and swallowed the tripe I was fed about how this new style of writing, which pumped nothing but hatred and despair from its cold, black, metaphorical heart, would one day be useful to me in the real world.
The real kick in the ass is, of course, that I have not once in my post-sixth-grade-life used, seen, or even publicly recognized the existence of cursive (the smartasses among you will point out that I have just acknowledged it by writing this article, but as far as I’m concerned you just imagined this article and I still adamantly deny the existence of any such script). When it really comes down to it, handwriting in general was largely replaced by the newly widespread invention of computers. My pain and suffering were for naught. Although I did build up some wrist muscles a couple years earlier than I otherwise would have. That last sentence, aside from being a fragment, is entirely unnecessary and largely irrelevant.
I suppose I can’t blame my teachers for the torture* they put me through. After all, no one would have guessed that computers would make formal handwriting utterly obsolete. I mean, back in that day computers were just room-sized contraptions that could do simple math and operated on “electricity,” a bizarre form of energy which could not possibly have been discovered earlier than 1988, and even that’s pushing it. Yet sometimes I wish I could go back. If only… If only…
*Yes, I meant that. It’s worse than water boarding.
