Strangely unique: about pens and handwriting.

Okay, first off, the good news – my homework for my Holly Lisle lesson three is done, finally! Fifty-one scenes from ‘Won’t somebody think of the children’ on four by six index cards, after nearly two weeks.

Part of the reason that it took so long was that I was filling out the cards by hand, with a pen, since the instructions warned strenuously against using ‘software index cards’, and I don’t currently have a typewriter that can handle index cards.

I don’t like handwriting. I don’t have very legible handwriting, except maybe when I’m right in the zone AND taking a lot of time to be very careful about it. Actually, I never have legible cursive handwriting. I sometimes have half-decent hand-printing, when I’m in the zone and taking a lot of time to be very careful about it.

And when I’m not in the zone, it sucks a lot of energy out of me to have to keep handwriting. Sigh.

One of the things that I was reminded of while doing these index cards was the very strange way that I have of holding pens and pencils. I don’t really remember when I picked up this very peculiar habit, but I think that I was probably around grade three when somebody with the school got the notion of making me print with rubber things slipped onto my pencils to try and break me of it. That plan didn’t last for too long.

Okay, here’s how most people normally hold a pen, I think. Apologies for the picture quality, it’s a bit hard to take a picture of your right hand with your left:

Notice how the thumb, index finger, and middle finger all surround the head of the pen. I seldom hold a pen this way, though I think I do it about half the time when I scrawl out a distinctive signature, and it doesn’t seem to make much obvious difference, though a handwriting specialist would probably conclude that one or the other is a forgery. 😉

Here’s how I usually hold a pen if I’m trying to print something that would be legible to me, or fill out a cheque, or address an envelope:

As you can see, the index finger is way back, cradling the far end of the pen from the writing point, and it’s the thumb, middle finger, and ring finger that surround the point. I have no idea why or how I started holding pencils and pens this way, or what good it is. The plastic sleeves that they used to slip on my pencils were triangular in cross-section, so they made it marginally more comfortable to hold them the usual way.

So, I don’t really have a moral to all of this, just thought that you’d enjoy seeing one of the many things that makes me the strange and unique individual that I am. What makes YOU strange and unique?