Sign Here

My handwriting is horrible.

Actually, that's not entirely true: it's just my cursive that's bad. It was never really that good to begin with, but as time goes on it gets worse and worse. I don't even really use cursive unless I am signing my name, and that is when I am reminded of how poor it is.

Every time that I vote I get the same comment from the ladies at the sign-in table:

"That's your signature?"

"Yup, shoulda been a doctor, don't know what happened." I smile.

Stern faced, the lady will usually reply, "It's atrocious. You should be ashamed."

I'll just keep smiling, thinking to myself, Lady, I have plenty of other things to be ashamed of, so it's gonna be awhile before I'm ashamed of that.

The funniest thing about it though is that the sign-in book has the signature from everytime that I've ever gone to vote, dating back to 1992. It is interesting to see how my signature has changed over the years. The first time that I voted my signature was sloppy. Looking at it now you can read every letter and clearly read what my first name is and what my last name is. Looking at my past signatures in sequence you can see a slow progression. My first name becomes a letter and a few arbitrary loops and so does my last name. Now my signature is pretty much the first letter of my first name and an almost straight line.

I know enough not to use my cursive in day to day situations, and I wish other people would too. It turns out that a lot of people don't write in cursive very well either. Sure sometimes it's fun trying to decode a message that someone has written, but it is incredibly frustrating when you are trying to follow directions of any kind.

So it's straight block letters for me, and I'm fine with that. My block letters are at least readable, and I actually think that when I sign my name that way it looks pretty good.

But now that I think about it, what exactly is cursive writing for? Is it another way to keep school kids busy, spending hours upon hours practicing how to write the alphabet in a nice neat cursive that they are never going to use, before pushing them along to the next grade where they are going to learn other useless things that will never be used when they are adults?