Since I'm 74, I suppose I'd have an excuse for my bad handwriting if I chose to make one up. Like, my hands are shaky due to a neurological condition.
But actually my handwriting has been minimally legible to others for most of my life. Me, I can generally read what I write pretty well, though not always.
On the plus side, my affliction makes for some interesting conversations in the grocery store checkout lane. Here's what the clerk at LifeSource Natural Foods here in Salem, Oregon and I talked about today.
Clerk: The number you wrote on this container can't be right.
Me: (peering to see what was on the label I put on the container) Those are 9's at the end.
Clerk: No, I'm talking about the first number; 599 is bulk dish soap, and that isn't what this is.
Me: Yeah, it's bulk almond butter, 399. But hey, I got two of three numbers written legibly.
Clerk: Thanks for remembering the number.
Me: Thank you for bringing me back to a memory of first grade. I'm going to go home and practice writing 3's until I can stop them looking like 5's.
Clerk: Oh, you don't have to do that.
Me: I know, but I want to. Though in my defense, there was quite a crowd around the nut butter area just now, and I was a bit stressed wanting to write the number on the label I'd put on the container as quickly as possible.
Which was kind of true, though it doesn't explain the many other times I've been asked to decipher an item number I'd written on a label. Occasionally I'm even asked if the number is English, or, say, Sanskrit.
Comments